


"This is what defines you, Stiles. The unexpected."

by limesnapdragon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A/B/O, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Everyone Is A Werewolf, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Bad Parenting, But of course he looks 24, De-Aged Derek, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, He's 18, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mildly De-Aged, No mpreg, Slow Build, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Smut, but most of them are dead anyway, not worse than Mr. Lahey's but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:28:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 77,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8489686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limesnapdragon/pseuds/limesnapdragon
Summary: "If someone had told him two weeks ago he would be on illegal drugs and hanging out with Derek Hale, he would probably have punched them. Life was funny sometimes."Stiles is about to turn seventeen and present, find out whether he's an alpha, a beta or an omega. A lot is riding on it and Stiles is nervous as hell. He hadn't expected Derek Hale, of all people, to be helping him out, but when you're in deep shit and the guy's handing you a paddle, what else are you going to do?





	1. Background Information

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not writing this as I go so updates will be quite regular.  
> This first chapter is just an explanation of my particular take on the A/B/O trope. It's hopefully not too long and the story will make much more sense. You can of course skip it but do be aware that some things may not make 100% sense.

A rundown of how this particular 'verse works:

 

**Sex vs Gender:** In this fic, sex is male or female, whereas gender is alpha, beta or omega, and anybody can be any combination of them. That's it.   
Discrimination and stereotypes **do** exist and have a significant role. In theory and according to the law, all the genders are equal, but people have their opinions, and discrimination is commonplace in the same way that it is in our society against, for example, women and LGBT individuals. And this is, of course, a story about Stiles, so it is a story about defiance.

**Alphas:** Have red eyes. They are physically the strongest and fastest and have good senses. Biologically, both male and female alphas have knots - males have the knot on their dick that swells, whereas females have a ring of muscle that tightens and latches on. The purpose of the knot is to increase fertility and the chances of having children.

**Betas:** Have gold eyes. They aren't as strong or fast as alphas but they are generally much smarter and more cunning. They do not have knots. Additionally, their bodies are not really built to procreate with alphas, but they do so anyway.

**Omegas:** Have blue eyes. They aren't naturally strong either, but they have the best senses and are talented at reading people. They do not have knots, rather, their organs are built to work with alpha knots. Alpha knots are often uncomfortable and sometimes painful for betas, but this isn't the case for omegas.

**Fertility:** Alpha/omega pairings have a very good chance of producing offspring, but omegas are uncommon. Alpha/beta pairs are the next most likely,  followed by beta/beta, then alpha/alpha, then omega/omega. Betas and omegas cannot produce children together at all, and don't feel any attraction towards each other. This is because omegas are nature's way of upping the overall fertility rate, which they do by being very compatible with alphas, so they're not attracted to betas at all.

**Presenting:** Used interchangeably with 'declaring'. Happens on a person's seventeenth birthday, not from birth. People who have not presented - that is, people under 17 - do not have heightened senses or strength, and are not attracted or attractive to people who have presented.

**Mpreg:** Not a thing in this 'verse. To produce a child, the parents must be male/female.

**Underage:** I'm not sure how to tag this for underage. The legal age for sex in this story is 17 (presenting age). **All explicit sex happens between people aged 17 and over**. There are also references to sex at age 16, none of which are remotely explicit.

**Consent:** There are the usual consent issues surrounding the A/B/O trope. Legal framework exists to prevent people from taking advantage of others during heats/ruts but it isn't always effective. The story does deal with this issue.

 

 

Sorry about that, but I'd rather put it out here in the beginning than end up with long-winded and boring exposition at daft places in the story. So. Enjoy and please do tell me what you think!


	2. You Can't Sleep Here

“Dude, seriously. It’s gonna be fine.”

Scott laid a calming hand on Stiles’s arm as they sat opposite each other in the cafeteria. An alpha’s touch often soothed others – something to do with protective instincts – but this wasn’t helping. Stiles was running at an all-time high; his knee was jumping, his fingers were tapping, he was blinking three times as much as he actually needed to and he was talking even faster than normal. His voice turned high-pitched and he was physically restraining his arms by crossing them so he didn’t flail and take someone’s eye out.

“That’s easy for you to say, Scott, okay, but you weren’t ever in this situation!”

Stiles was frustrated. He would be turning seventeen in a few days, and seventeen was the presenting age. In a few short days he would know, he would finally understand his place in the world: alpha, beta, or omega.

Scott didn’t understand his nerves because Scott had all the alpha hallmarks even before he presented. Everyone knew it, even if it wasn’t openly said. Presenting was often stressful, like an awkward and very sudden puberty, so it wasn’t something you joked about at the dinner table, but everyone had known or at least suspected. Scott himself wasn’t even that surprised.

Alphas often had a strong sense of duty, like it was up to them to protect others, even people they didn’t know. Scott took every animal’s death at the vet clinic where he worked personally, and each time he would sulk and mull over it for a few days, mumbling about what he could have done. Scott was that guy in the corridors who told bullies to fuck off and saved the day for younger students. He wasn’t overbearing or domineering, which was a common alpha fault, but he did like to be in charge. Nobody had raised any eyebrows when he declared as alpha.

But that was because the people in his household didn’t mind, Stiles reflected bitterly. Scott’s mother Melissa would have been just as happy with him if he were a beta like her. When Scott’s father had come by on one of his awkward monthly visits and given Scott the impression that being an alpha would make Dad proud Melissa had kicked him out. Scott turned out alpha anyway, but it didn’t seem fair to Stiles.

His father was an alpha, and since his mother’s death the Sheriff was adamant on Stiles following a pre-ordained path he had forged. Jonusz Stilinski – John to his colleagues – was a good Sheriff but he was also of the opinion that an alpha man was a real man, and that beta men just didn’t quite cut it. He never would have admitted it so openly – genderist comments like that wouldn’t be looked on well by his superiors – but Stiles was good at reading people. He knew that all the off-hand comments his father had come out with over the years stemmed from the fear that his son wouldn’t be man enough, wouldn’t be _alpha_ enough. John brought it up casually, in dismissive tones in conversation – “can you believe, she’s going out with _him_?”, “some beta”, “weak”, “watered down”, as if by making Stiles hate betas he could ensure Stiles’s presentation went to his taste.

John had decided that Stiles was going to reveal himself a proper man, an alpha who would protect and provide and have children, as opposed to a beta, who were physically not as strong and not as likely to be able to reproduce. Alpha-beta pairings, like Stiles’s parents, had an easier time conceiving than beta-beta pairings, which made them superior to some people. It made no sense since there were roughly twice as many betas around as there were alphas. Nobody had an easier time conceiving than alpha-omega pairs, but there were so few omegas that the research into them wasn’t extensive. The existence of omegas was nature’s way of trying to increase the overall fertility rate, since couplings between the other two genders were so unlikely to result in pregnancy.

But omegas were so unusual that the possibility didn’t bother Stiles. He wasn’t an alpha and he knew it, and in a few days so would his dad and everyone else. The alphas in his year would pick on him and it would be accepted, despite being generally viewed as wrong. A lot of people believed that beta men weren’t as worthy as their alpha counterparts and Stiles was not looking forward to snide comments about his capabilities as a man. Stiles had dated a little – his longest-running girlfriend had been Malia Tate in the year above him, but she left him just before she presented. Dating and friendships were so much easier before everyone presented, before an invisible, intangible hierarchy told everyone what they could and couldn’t do.

“Stiles! Listen, if you do present as beta, your dad can’t be mad at you forever.”

Stiles snorted. “Clearly you do not know my dad.”

Scott grabbed his face to make him look him in the eyes. “What’s the worst that could happen? You present as beta – _if_ you are a beta – and your dad is disappointed. But he can’t be pissed at you for the rest of your life for something that isn’t your fault.”

Stiles gave Scott a hard look.

“No, Stiles, seriously! I know your dad has his preferences –”

Stiles snorted. “That’s a nice way of saying he’s a discriminating asshole.”

“– But you’re his _son._ He might not like it, but he’ll accept it, Stiles, he has to.”

Stiles was speaking a little louder than he should have been, but he didn’t care. He was upset and angry and terrified all at once. “Do you know what he said to Coach Lahey after Isaac presented beta?”

“Stiles, you’re not Isaac –”

Stiles brought a fist down on the table. “He said ‘I’m so sorry to hear that’. Sorry, Scott! He felt _sorry_ for Isaac’s dad!”

“Maybe he was just trying to be polite –”

Stiles was red in the face and almost yelling at this point. A few neighbouring tables had turned around to stare at him, but he didn’t care. “Isaac’s dad _hits him_ , Scott! He beats him up ’cuz he’s a beta! And our good Sheriff, he knows and he does _nothing_!” Stiles pushed his food halfway across the table in disgust. “I – I can’t do this, I don’t care.”

“Stiles, what’s –”

He grabbed his bag and slung it angrily onto his back. Stiles was too wrapped up in too many feelings. “I need to think,” he muttered. “I’m getting out of here.”

“I’ll come with you!” Scott called, concern all over his face.

“I need to think _alone_.” Stiles ground out. It hurt his friend but he couldn’t think about that right now, he didn’t have the emotional capacity to worry about Scott’s feelings.

_See,_ said a small voice in his head, _this is what separates alphas from betas. Alphas worry about other people. They aren’t so selfish._

_Scott’s better than you._

He let out a frustrated yell and stalked out of the cafeteria.

He didn’t care that he didn’t have a pass to leave school, didn’t care that he was going to be marked down for ditching and his dad would probably get mad. _His dad._ The words brought out a little squeeze of panic in his chest and he groaned out loud. He needed some air.

Stiles sat himself in his car, started it up and was reversing as aggressively out the parking lot as he could without stalling the damn thing when the teacher supervising the cafeteria came running after him. Coach Finstock stood blocking Stiles’s exist, blowing on his whistle repeatedly.

“Bilinski! Where d’you think you’re going?”

Driving forward and testing the Coach’s reflexes were had occurred to Stiles, but he dismissed it. He decided instead to just get rid of him, relying on the fact that Finstock’s smoking habit meant he was almost never actually in the cafeteria when he should be. “Coach, do you know that a food fight has started in there?”

“A food fight?” Finstock’s eyes went wide and he seemed to shiver. It was common knowledge that Coach was a picky eater and also that food fights made Jared throw up. The janitor was on lunch break and last time a food fight started Mr. Harris had to help the students clean it up. “Somebody started a food fight?”

Stiles nodded sagely, trying not to clench the steering wheel. His head was pounding, his face felt hot and he wanted to both cry and vomit. With a muttered excuse Finstock ran off in the direction of the cafeteria and Stiles gassed up and manhandled the Jeep onto the road. There was a place in the woods he liked to go when he was stressed, and if this wasn’t stress he wasn’t sure what was.

 

The tree trunk was huge and old and Stiles could lie on it, starfish his body completely and never touch the ends. It was mossy, too, so it was kind of soft, but most of all there was something calming about it. He felt relaxed here, deep in the woods. Nobody could find him here, nobody would want anything from him. Here, sprawled out on the tree and listening to the wind rustle gently through the leaves, nobody cared if he was a beta.

Suddenly all his problems came rushing back to him in stomach-churningly vivid detail, and he jolted on the trunk, sitting bolt upright.

_Beta, beta, beta, beta…_

_I can’t be a beta!_

Dry sobs wracked his body and he let out something between a howl and a wail. Unaware of what he was doing, unaware of everything in the world, he jumped to his feet and ran over to the nearest tree. He slammed his fist against it, not even feeling the pain as tears coursed down his cheeks and he yelled incoherently. It was a release of his feelings and it felt good, so he threw all his weight against the tree with the other hand.

Stiles punched and kicked the tree for all he was worth until he began to feel the toll it was taking on his body. His knuckles were bloody and half the skin gone, he was fairly certain he had broken a finger, his arms were aching and his shins felt bruised. The pain wrought more tears out of him and he blubbered, stumbling back to his stump and tripping over roots. He screamed and yelled and dry heaved.

In two days, Stiles would be an outcast in his own house. His dad would hate him for not being man enough more than he already did.

The last bombshell Stiles had dropped on his father was that he was bisexual. John had buried his face in his hands and eventually given him a smack upside the head. “No son of mine is _gay,_ ” John had hissed, “And you will _not_ reveal this to anyone else. Don’t need this getting out.”

In a small voice Stiles had tried to explain to his father that he was not gay, he was bisexual, and that Scott and most of his friends already knew. John had let out something of a strangled shout and shaken Stiles by the shoulders. His alpha emerged and his eyes glowed red as he shook his son. “No son of mine messes around with _men_!”

John had used the alpha’s voice, trying to command Stiles into following his wishes. Stiles hadn’t presented yet so it didn’t work, and besides, even an alpha’s command wasn’t enough to stop something like that. John knew it and had done it out of anger but Stiles had never really forgiven him.

When John would receive the news that not only did Stiles like men, but he was a _beta,_ he would be furious. Stiles would have a tough time producing children with a beta woman and would be totally unable to with a man, and John frowned on alpha women who dated beta men. He said it was unnatural. To John, what mattered was Stiles’s ability to continue the Stilinski name in the good, traditional way, and as far as he was concerned, Stiles had screwed his chances enough.

Not everyone frowned on beta men, but it was common enough that most beta boys hung their heads, even if it was only a little and in private. Stiles didn’t want that. He wanted to continue living his life the way it was, before someone else’s hierarchy got in the way and his dad decided to make decisions for him.

Tears blurred his vision as Stiles got up and wandered in the direction of his Jeep. It was getting dark and he should head home soon, try to eat and sleep if he could. His head was somewhere else entirely and he couldn’t see for tears and blood – he must have wiped his still-bleeding hands on his face – and after half an hour of walking (or more accurately, stumbling) towards his Jeep it occurred to him that he should have happened upon it already.

He blinked tears and blood and tried to clean his face, but it didn’t do him any good. Darkness was falling rapidly and he couldn’t see his car. He spotted a small trail, and figured that it must lead back to the road and he would emerge from the woods a quarter-mile or so from the car. He couldn’t be too far away now.

After a little while longer of floundering along the path, night had settled completely and Stiles realized faintly that he had left his phone in the car. He didn’t feel like he was getting much closer to the road, but with the state he was in, he was having a hard time even caring. He was exhausted and the ground was beginning to look really attractive.

_You can’t sleep here,_ said a logical voice in his head, and Stiles groaned and continued dragging his tired body and his useless brain along the trail. He had no idea where he was going, but all he could focus on was that there was a path and he should follow it.

It was a few hours later when Stiles finally collapsed on the path. His body was sagging and he couldn’t hold himself up. He fell and it was only moments before his vision blacked entirely.


	3. Quit Avoiding The Question

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you will notice in this chapter, the point of view does move around. It's mostly Stiles parts and some Derek view, but occasionally a more neutral one with a little bit of both thrown in. Who doesn't love dramatic irony?

****Derek had hit the gym, he’d eaten dinner, he’d done his homework and he’d even vacuumed downstairs when the house began to feel claustrophobic.

Derek’s older sister Laura was working a double shift and Peter was out who knew where so he had the house to himself, and it bored him. Derek might have had terrible social skills but he did like people and became moody if he was left on his own too long. Since the car accident that had killed his parents and his younger sister, he felt alone far too often. He was eighteen years old, would graduate in the spring and had no idea what he wanted to do with himself.

So he had gone for an evening walk. It was dark but Derek knew the forest around his family home like the back of his hand and besides, alphas had something that resembled night-vision when they wanted to. It wasn’t perfect, but Derek had no doubt that even if his vision failed him, he could easily track his own scent back home. He wasn’t worried.

He had been out for about an hour and a half, thinking and muttering and trying to figure out what he should do with himself. He was the alpha, he was supposed to be the one taking care of his beta sister, but given that she had qualifications and a job and an insistence that he finished high school he had done as she wished and engaged. He got good grades (in the subjects he liked), he played basketball in his lunch break and he had even gotten a part-time job at the mechanic. His parents would have wanted him to study medicine but Derek couldn’t see it; he hated biology and science in general.

He had thought long and hard and had no idea what he wanted. He couldn’t follow his parents’ wishes and he felt like he was betraying them. Laura had studied medicine and was doing okay as a junior doctor. Derek’s parents had believed in traditional career paths like engineering or law but physics made him feel ill and he was atrocious at public speaking. He felt like he had no choice but to disappoint, and it hurt.

He was pondering the depths of his hatred for biology – maybe he was okay with animals, could he be a vet? – when he caught a strange scent. Initially, he smelled fear and frustration, when it was overpowered by something much stronger. Blood, and male, but whether from an alpha or a beta, he couldn’t tell. He should be able to and narrowed his eyes at the thought. An unpresented, maybe. Some ten-year-old had gotten lost in the woods and scratched himself on a branch. Derek took off and followed his nose.

When he found the source of the blood, he no longer smelled fear because the boy in question was out cold. How could he be out this far? Why was he all on his own? It was at least two miles in any direction to a road or civilization, so why was some kid wandering around in the woods?

Derek couldn’t leave him here. It wasn’t cold enough to be dangerous but the boy was obviously lost and needed help. His knuckles were bloody and there was some on his face, too, but Derek didn’t see any other wounds. He sighed and crouched down, trying to get a better look, but his alpha vision wasn’t helping him identify whoever had spontaneously passed out in the woods. He slung one arm under the kid’s shoulders and another under his knees and began to carry him back to his house. The boy didn’t stir, which worried Derek all the more, and he set as fast a pace as he could, which was considerable given that the boy weighed at most a hundred-sixty pounds. Poor kid. Derek was going to figure out what was up with him and what had made him come so far out into the woods and away from safety. His protective alpha instincts wouldn’t let him do anything but.

 

Stiles woke up with a yell to a throbbing pain in his left index finger. He didn’t register anything other than _pain, pain, pain_ for a few minutes, until he sat back and examined his surroundings.

He was in a bed, but it wasn’t his own. His bed was pushed right into the wall on two sides whereas this one was centered along one wall. It was soft and comfortable, despite his clothes feeling dirty and his teeth kind of grimy. It looked like somebody’s bedroom, with a wardrobe and mirror and desk, but so nondescript that it was more of a guest bedroom than anything else.

Stiles lay smack in the middle of the bed like he always did, and on the left side a guy sat, holding Stiles’s hand.

He yelped and yanked his hand out of the guy’s grip, which was loose, and rubbed sleep out of his eyes before he recognized who it was. “Wait…what? How’d I get here?” He looked down anxiously at his hand. “And what did you do to my finger, man? It hurt!”

“You dislocated it,” Derek Hale replied flatly. “I found you passed out in the woods and I put your finger back in the joint while you were asleep.”

Derek Hale was one of those people who didn’t understand how much eye contact was too much. Or maybe that was just because he was insanely good looking and his eyes were gorgeous. Stiles swallowed before he spoke. “I’m at your house?”

“Yeah. What the hell were you doing in the woods, Stiles?”

Stiles frowned. “You know who I am?”

Derek just continued staring at him. “We have chemistry together. Harris?”

“No, yeah, I’m in junior chemistry, but like – do you know everyone in your classes?” Stiles was incredulous. Derek Hale knew who he was? Nobody knew who he was.

Derek let out a short, frustrated sigh. “Stiles, quit dodging the question. What were you doing so far out in the woods at night?”

Stiles opened his mouth to reply then promptly closed it. “I went for a walk. What were _you_ doing out in the woods at night?”

“I live here.”

He stuttered. “Well, I –”

“Live downtown with the Sheriff. Far away from these parts.” Derek grabbed his hands before Stiles could respond and thrust the broken skin in Stiles’s face. “Were you fighting someone? Who was it?”

Stiles yanked his hand out of Derek’s death grip and tried to ignore how his knuckles had obviously been cleaned and patched up. “I wasn’t fighting anyone. I was working through some stuff.”

“Stiles, you could’ve gotten hurt! Your dad didn’t know where you were!”

“My dad put out an APB on me?” Stiles scrambled out of the bed. “I – I have to tell him –”

“Relax, I called your friend Scott. He told your dad you were staying over at his house.”

Stiles jumped to his feet and ran a nervous hand through his hair. “He’s gonna kill me, oh my god, I am so dead, oh Jesus, okay, I need to get to the car and then I need to figure this out before Thursday rolls around and I am actually murdered…” He rubbed a hand over his face and tried to quell the sudden flare-up of panic.

Derek smelled Stiles’s panic and grabbed his shoulders gently. “Hey, Stiles, hey, I found your car and I drove it here. Relax, okay. What’s happening on Thursday?”

At the mention of the word Derek smelled fear began to engulf Stiles completely. The air was thick with the younger boy’s dread and Derek was scared for him. “Stiles! What’s on Thursday?”

“It’s my birthday.” It sounded mostly like a whimper. Stiles spotted his keys lying on the desk and pulled himself out of Derek’s grip to grab them. “Okay, uh, thank you for the help, really appreciate it, but I gotta fly, like, now, so I’ll see you at school, thanks again, bye!”

Stiles dashed out of the room and practically sprinted out the house. Derek marveled at how fast he could speak but felt concern nagging at him. Something was up with this kid. Derek knew from chemistry that Stiles Stilinski was a sarcastic big-mouth with attention issues, but he never usually seemed so panicked. His birthday? Why be scared of your birthday? Derek didn’t get it. Stiles Stilinski made no sense at all.

Stiles rushed home to change, because there was dirt on his, well, everything, and he had first period English with Lydia Martin, who famously disliked dirt and especially dirty clothes and he did kind of want to impress her. He made it to class _just_ after the bell rang, was marked late, and took his usual seat beside Scott.

“Dude! Why were you hanging out with Derek Hale?” Scott was, predictably, curious to know why he had gotten a phone call from Derek at eleven at night asking him to cover for Stiles. Scott was even more blank as to how Derek had gotten his phone number. The only interesting person he’d given his phone number to lately was Allison Argent, who was unfortunately not in junior English because she was really good at English and was in the senior class. “Seriously! Why did I get a phone call from Derek Hale saying that you were passed out?”

“Could you say that any louder?” Stiles asked as a few people turned around to snicker and stare at him.  

“Why were you out in the woods?” Scott hissed at him.

“I went to the tree after I left school to calm down. You know I like hanging out in the woods.”

“Why were you out in the woods at ten at night? You were there for, what, nine hours?”

“Mr. McCall,” Miss Blake fixed him with a stare. “Do you have something you want to share with the class?”

Stiles fought back a smug facial expression.

“N-no, Miss Blake.” Scott replied meekly.

“Good. Would you like to summarize chapter three for us?”

 

 

Stiles’s morning passed mostly without incident. Eventually, Scott wrung the truth out of him, as they’d both known he would. Scott blamed his exhaustion on his looming status declaration.

“There’s a physical toll on your body, man, things are changing, don’t worry about it.”

“Scott, we’ve been over this. I’m going to announce my beta-ness to the world on Thursday and it’s going to go horribly.”

“Stiles, I –”

Stiles was struck by a sudden idea. “Would you help me fake my death?”

Scott stared hard at him. “No!”

They didn’t have third period together, because Scott was a biology smartypants in the senior class whereas Stiles was in his own, but they did have the same chemistry class. Stiles had sat down at their usual table and cleared a space for Scott when Derek Hale entered the room wearing his trademark leather jacket and broody expression, saw the empty seat, and made a beeline for it.

Stiles hurriedly tried to push his bag onto Scott’s spot to make it look occupied, but Derek shoved it back over to him. Stiles threw his hands in the air. “What, are you just gonna ditch Danny? Ditch your lab partner?”

Danny waved over at him and Derek grinned. Stiles didn’t think he’d seen Derek grin before and it derailed his train of thought. “Danny’s cool with Scott.”

Scott rounded the door just as the bell rang in time to see Stiles sigh dramatically, and instead took the vacant seat beside Danny. He shot Stiles a questioning look, to which Stiles replied by again throwing his hands in the air and pointing at Derek.

Scott turned around to listen to Mr. Harris’s monotone lecture on energy profiles and Derek turned to Stiles. “You’re freaking out about presenting, aren’t you? That’s why you were out in the woods last night?”

Stiles was taken aback. “How do you know I’m presenting on Thursday?”

“I saw your file,” Derek shrugged, like it was unimportant. “It says you’re turning seventeen. I’m putting two and two together and guessing that it’s the presentation that’s bugging you. Am I right?”

“How did you see my file?” Stiles was genuinely confused. When had his file been made available to the general public? More importantly, how was he ever going to get a job if that file was online?

“I stole it from the office. But I put it back again. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna go telling everyone your real name or anything.”

Stiles tried to look scandalized, like stealing files was something he wouldn’t dream of doing and had never, ever done. Derek saw through it and flashed him another grin. “ _Miloslaw_.” He added, correctly pronounced and just quietly enough for only Stiles to hear.

Stiles gritted his teeth but tried to play it off lightly, like it didn’t bother him. Standard Stiles tactics. Of course he didn’t realize that Derek could hear him clenching his teeth together with his superior alpha hearing and his close proximity. “Most people who look through my file don’t want to be my friend.” He noted casually.

Derek waved a hand as though it were irrelevant. “Yeah, I know, you’re not a big fan of rules and you bit a cop once. Listen, you need to relax about presenting, okay? I know it’s intense and all but it’s not the end of the world.”

The comment was well intended but a smack in the face to Stiles, who balled his fists out of anger. His cheeks turned red and his tone heated as he looked straight ahead away from Derek and said very quietly, “You don’t know anything about me, Derek Hale, so don’t try to give me advice.”

Scott turned around to check on his friend and took in the scene. Stiles was staring fixedly at Harris’s forehead with one fist balled around his pen and another around the seam of his shirt, Derek frowning at him in confusion and concern. Derek’s alpha instincts made him want to protect the boy who he had found in the woods all bloody and wrecked, so he had read up on him and tried to figure out what was upsetting him. He had felt the terror and dread rolling off this boy in waves, and the intensity of those feelings worried him. Stiles was freaking the hell out – enough to, for some unknown reason, come out to the middle of the woods to let off steam by punching something. And Stiles’s reaction told Derek that it was definitely the presentation that was worrying him.

“I know this is gonna sound dumb coming from me,” Derek tried in a gentle tone. Well, his best gentle tone. “But, y’know, it’s okay to not be an alpha. Betas are valid people, too.”

Stiles continued to glare at the teacher. Derek Hale, star of the basketball team and manly, popular alpha was telling him to calm down about being a beta. Derek Hale could suck it. Stiles knew about the accident that had killed half the Hale family and he knew what losing your mother felt like, but Derek didn’t have parents that gave him no choice over something he couldn’t control. “You do know that betas get treated like second-class citizens, right?” Stiles replied in an icy voice. “That alpha kids pick on them, and it’s okay, because they’re alphas and that’s just what they do?” He steered the conversation away from his dad – he wasn’t about to spill all his guts to Derek Hale – but made it clear that being a beta wasn’t all that.

Derek looked taken aback by his tone but furrowed his eyebrows. “Anybody bothers you for being a beta, you tell me, Stiles.”

Stiles snorted derisively and looked over at him. “Why, so you can stare them to death?”

“No, I’ll break their noses.” Derek said, perfectly calm, holding Stiles’s gaze.

Stiles smiled bitterly. He was surprised by Derek’s proclamation and his brain decided to disconnect further from his mouth than it was normally. “Well, you break the Sheriff’s nose, I think you get shot.”

Stiles froze. That was supposed to be a wry thought in his head – why had it come out of his mouth? Why? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now he looked like an idiotic charity case in front of Derek. Freaking hell.

What was wrong with him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Miloslaw looks kind of dodgy but it is a legit Polish name. As far as I understand it is pronounced mee-loh-slof. A popular nickname for it is Milosz and I like to headcanon that Stiles's mum used to call him that.


	4. For Future Reference

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next will be short, but it will pick back up again.

The news that Stiles’s father was being an asshole about his son’s presentation saddened Derek to the bone. Mostly because there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He knew John Stilinski was an alpha himself, but he didn’t realize that it was so important that Stiles follow in those footsteps. Didn’t people realize, there was nothing wrong with being a beta?

“What does your dad say about it?” He asked in a subdued voice.

Stiles had turned away from him, shrinking into the wall and glueing his eyes back on Harris. “Nothing,” he muttered sullenly. “Just forget I said anything.”

Shame and frustration pulsed off him, and Derek understood that this wasn’t a topic Stiles wanted to talk about. Derek was dithering, unsure whether he should leave Stiles alone or do as his alpha instincts told him to and press the issue, fix it. On the one hand Stiles had said to shut up. On the other hand he might be able to help. It was a tough decision.

Derek had been mulling it over for a good ten minutes when a new scent hit his nose. Pain. Stiles was in abject pain. When he looked over at Stiles he had one arm held tightly around his stomach, the other gripping the table so hard that the little skin left on his knuckles went white. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were wild.

“Where does it hurt?” Derek asked urgently, trying to see what was wrong.

“Back,” Stiles ground out, “And stomach. Like I’m being stabbed.” He tried to get down off the chair but his knees gave way. He would have tumbled to the floor had Derek not grabbed him. He threw one of Stiles’s arms over his shoulder and held him around the waist, ignoring the stares of his classmates.

“Mr. Harris? Something’s wrong with Stiles, I don’t think he can walk. I’m going to take him to the nurse.”

Mr. Harris could smell the pain stench that Stiles was exuding and waved them off. “For future reference, Mr. Hale, that should generally be phrased as a question.” He added snidely.

Derek had half-dragged Stiles to the doorway and was not impressed by the teacher’s comment. Couldn’t he see Stiles wasn’t well? Couldn’t he smell the pain? Wasn’t he concerned at all? Derek’s nose told him loud and clear something was very wrong. “For future reference, I wasn’t asking.” He retorted before heading down the corridor.

 

 

The nurse diagnosed Stiles with stomach cramps and Derek gave her an incredulous look. “You’re kidding, right? Have you ever smelled stomach cramps this strong?”

Nurse Holloway sighed and gave Derek a long-suffering look. “Mr. Hale, I am aware that an alpha’s pheromone detection capability is better than mine, but if you belittle me again I will have you removed from this office.”

Derek bit back a retort as he stared at Stiles lying flat-out on the bed. He wasn’t in as much pain as earlier, but it was still bad, and Derek’s alpha wanted to protect Stiles from his pain. “Fine. Can I take him home?”

“And miss class?”

Derek gestured to Stiles’s bleary gaze and the hand he had gripping his stomach, as though he could squeeze the pain away. “He can’t drive like that. He can barely even walk.”

“Then I’ll call a parent or guardian. You may go back to class, Mr. Hale.”

“He only has his dad at home and he’s the Sheriff,” Derek argued. “He’s probably busy. And there’s only ten minutes until the lunch break anyway.”

Nurse Holloway sighed again and waved him off. “Just get him out of my sight. Stilinski, was it?”

Derek helped Stiles to stand up and supported him again as they made their slow, unwieldy way to the carpark. Stiles lowered himself slowly into the seat and Derek was even about to buckle his seatbelt for him when Stiles swatted him away. Derek walked around the car to the drivers’ seat, wondering why his alpha had chosen this specific person to worry about. Stiles was so…normal. But all his alpha wanted to do was hide him away from the world and the Sheriff and see that crooked smile again.

 

Derek drove Stiles home and the two sat in silence. Stiles was too weak to want to talk. A cold sweat had broken out and he let out an occasional whine of pain and clutched his belly. His eyelids were pressed tightly shut and his body was curled up into him. With his free hand Derek felt Stiles’s temperature, wincing when his hand met an unusually cold, clammy surface. He had never before felt a person this cold. Stiles moaned at the contact, grabbed Derek’s hand and pressed it against his equally freezing cheek. It was clear he was drawing heat from Derek without actually being very aware of it and when Stiles laid the hand across his pulse point and groaned happily Derek almost swerved into the oncoming traffic.

He found the spare key as per Stiles’s slurred instructions but Stiles wouldn’t co-operate. Rather than let himself be helped out of the car he grabbed Derek’s jacket and whinnied, pushing his face into the warmth of Derek’s chest. Derek was surprised to say the least –in chemistry Stiles had been lucid and he seemed kind of pissed – but his alpha was yelling at him to get the boy inside and under a blanket so he grabbed Stiles and yanked him to his feet. His knees wouldn’t hold him, though, and Derek realized he would have to carry him, but holding him close would keep Stiles warm so that probably wasn’t such a bad idea.

Derek’s alpha rumbled in approval as he carried Stiles bridal-style to his room. An alpha’s wishes were physical reactions to his instinct – to hit, to shield, to mate, and sometimes to kill. The alpha manifested differently in different people – some used their alpha to explain away aggression as a lack of control. The alpha wasn’t always controllable, but Derek had never really given himself over to his baser instincts. Too many alphas used their inner wolf to hurt people and Derek would not be one of them. If he had to hurt someone, it had better be a rational, thought-out decision with a reachable goal in mind, and not just a violent response to instinct.

He could smell Stiles’s bedroom as soon as he entered the house and he made his way up there without difficulty. Stiles nuzzled into his chest and shifted his whole body so he lay snuggled in to Derek, who frowned at him as he tried to pry Stiles loose and lie him down on his bed. He covered him up with his duvet and stepped out of range of the grabby hands Stiles was making at him, instead moving to turn up the heat.

If Stiles had been a beta, such an open display of affection probably would have had an effect on Derek, or more accurately his alpha. Stiles was undeclared, which meant he held no biological attraction for those who had already presented, and he wouldn’t be able to sense others’ emotions by smell yet. That only came in after one had presented, because it made a person better equipped to find a sufficiently compatible mate, but Stiles wasn’t ready for a mate yet.

Derek frowned as Stiles let out a particularly loud whine of pain before he realized that the kid probably hadn’t eaten yet. He didn’t smell any food on his breath, and an empty stomach would not make whatever pain Stiles was experiencing any better. Derek found his way to the kitchen and was putting together a sandwich when a cop car rolled up to the house.

He smelled the Sheriff’s confusion at finding the door open before he saw the man himself. Stilinski looked surprised – he must not have expected to find someone in his house making food. “Who the hell are you?”

Derek tried to plaster a sane smile across his face. He’d been told his smile was intimidating and he did his best to tone that down. “I’m Derek Hale, sir, I’m a friend of your son’s.”

Stilinski raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall my son ever mentioning your name.”

Derek decided that explaining himself was the best way out. “Stiles got sick at school, sir, really sick. It was lunch break anyway so I took him home. He’s upstairs and I don’t think he’s eaten today, so I was gonna leave him some food.”

The Sheriff leveled him a look. “Stiles doesn’t usually eat breakfast. His friends know that.” He watched pointedly as Derek continued to spread butter on a piece of bread and put a lid on the sandwich. “How d’you know he hasn’t eaten? Did you see him this morning?”

“I couldn’t smell any food on him. Sir. The nurse says he has stomach cramps, I thought maybe if his stomach was fuller it wouldn’t hurt so much.”

Stilinski raised both eyebrows in mild incredulity. “Stomach cramps. Right. Because Stiles gets those all the time.”

Derek picked up the plate. “He does?”

The Sheriff sighed and waved him off. “No. Whatever. Just give him the food and go.”

Derek didn’t let Stilinski’s rude dismissal bother him as he jogged up the stairs and set the plate, along with a glass of juice, down on the nightstand. Stiles was fast asleep, snoring lightly, and Derek pulled the duvet closer around his shoulders before making his way downstairs again. He wasn’t expecting thanks from the Sheriff but neither had he anticipated Stilinski’s surprise when he caught Derek’s scent. He must not have thought Derek was an alpha. People usually spoke to alphas with slightly more deference.

“Thank you,” Stilinski added hurriedly as Derek was on his way out. “For looking out for him.”

It occurred to Derek that the Sheriff was one of those people who thought that alphas were superior and that this was the cause of Stiles’s panic. He had smelled the terror and dread radiating off the boy and he knew that if Stilinski was the cause, it was more than a mild preference when it came to Stiles’s upcoming declaration. Stiles was being pressured, and horribly. There was nothing anybody could do about how you presented. The Sheriff was hurting his son with his expectations and it infuriated Derek. Betas were people too.

He managed a curt nod before settling into his car and driving back to school, seething. For one person to be the cause of all that fear…the Sheriff must really be awful. If John couldn’t handle his son being a beta that was his own stupid fault but to take it out on Stiles was wrong and revolting. Derek gripped the steering wheel tightly and a muscle jumped in his jaw. Stiles hadn’t presented so his alpha wasn’t as protective as it would have been if the kid were a beta, but he still felt an overwhelming desire to make sure Stiles was okay, and it drove him nuts that there was nothing he could do about Stiles’s asshole father. He hoped, for Stiles’s sake, that he turned out an alpha on Thursday, but his gut was telling him that Stiles Stilinski was no alpha.


	5. Cuba Is Nice This Time Of Year

Stiles stayed home from school the next day.

He had been woken the day before by his father calling his name. “Stiles! Stiles! You can’t sleep now or you won’t sleep tonight!”

Stiles had sat up in bed, glanced around the room, and noticed a sandwich and a glass of juice left on the table next to his bed. “You made me a sandwich?” His dad usually left him to fend for himself when it came to food, which was fine by Stiles, because it meant he could live off Pop-Tarts and cherry Coke for an entire week if he wanted to. And suffer the consequences when his stomach reminded him that cherry Coke was not a vital component of a healthy diet.

“No. Derek did when he dropped you off.”

“Oh.” Stiles lifted the sandwich lid. Ham and salad. A good, safe sandwich. He picked it up and took a bite. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah, Derek said you hadn’t eaten today.” Stiles gulped nervously. “He’s a good kid. A nice, polite young man.” When Stiles did nothing but chew on the food he had stored in his cheeks, the Sheriff sighed and continued. “Stiles, why did I have to find out from Scott at half past eleven at night that you were staying at his house?”

Stiles stopped mid-chew. “Well, I went over to Scott’s, to, uh, study, but I was feeling kind of sick I guess, and I think I fell asleep, but anyway Scott said it was fine this morning.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Two things wrong with your story there. You never just ‘fall asleep’, Stiles, you hardly sleep at all. And two, Melissa McCall would never let you out of her house without making you eat, even if it was just an apple or something, and I didn’t smell any food on you today.”

Stiles was going to have to dig himself a slightly deeper pit of lies. “Like I said, I felt really sick. I was just exhausted and nauseous and stuff. And I was still nauseous in the morning so I didn’t want to eat. I’ve probably just gotten the flu or something.”

John was probably listening to his heartbeat to see if he was lying, but Stiles was a far more accomplished liar than anybody gave him credit for. “Are you on drugs, son?”

“What? Dad!”                                             

Thankfully, Sheriff Stilinski didn’t realize how terrified Stiles was of presenting on Thursday, or he did and he chalked it up Stiles’s “flu”. Stiles had managed to get a solid seven hours of sleep and not have dreams about his declaration when his dad ruffled his hair and said, “I know you’ll make me proud tomorrow, son,” on his way to work, which caused Stiles to feel like he was going to vomit.

Scott called during his break to try and soothe Stiles’s nerves, which was well-intended but entirely unsuccessful. He put Allison on the phone, who told him a long-winded story about how everyone thought her father was going to turn out an alpha and how crushed he was when he presented beta, but that everything was okay in the end and her dad was fine and had a happy, fulfilling family. Stiles appreciated her efforts but felt no better.

He was trying to move past his panic and just accept his doom, and he deemed the best way to do this was of course to play videogames. The pain in his stomach had dulled to a background throbbing, which he most of the time could ignore. He read up on biology, because his dad was going to be angry enough tomorrow without adding on top the news that Stiles had almost failed his last test, information which Stiles had conveniently withheld.

After making himself an expert on recessive X-chromosome linked traits Stiles padded downstairs to eat. He was finding the pain to ease up when his stomach was full, and anyway he knew it was bad to take painkillers without eating, so he fried himself some eggs and went back upstairs. The pain was constant and no amount of ibuprofen was helping, but there was nothing to be done for it so Stiles tried to go about his day as if it were a normal sick day.

In reality the nerves were knotting his stomach and he was scared out of his mind for tomorrow. John had never been violent towards him, but he did give him the occasional smack to the head or shove, and Stiles was worried his alpha and his ego might get the better of him. John had never really been truly _angry_ with Stiles’s antics except for the time he came out as bisexual – other than that he was mostly just exasperated – but, a nasty voice told Stiles, if that was his reaction to Stiles being bi, what was he going to do when Stiles presented beta?

Fear and dread flooded through him and Stiles suddenly found himself wishing he was on a small, faraway island, alone except for a well-stocked minibar. And maybe his friends and that cover model from _GQ_ he’d kind of been internet stalking _._ Cuba, he sighed mentally, Cuba was supposed to be nice this time of year, but how the hell he was supposed to get the money together he didn’t know.

Stiles tried not to linger on the fact that when he turned out to be his father’s biggest disappointment tomorrow there was a very real possibility that John might actually kick him out. He could probably stay with Scott, Melissa wouldn’t mind. When he turned seventeen he would be legally an adult and there wouldn’t be anyone around but himself to help him out. He tried to look at it positively. Tomorrow he could drink and gamble and have sex, as if he hadn’t done those things a million times before.

Well. He’d had sex once with Malia. And they’d broken up the following week because she was a few months older than him and she didn’t want to date someone who hadn’t presented yet. She herself presented beta and was currently dating an alpha from the lacrosse team.

Stiles tried _again_ to look at it positively, and not dwell on the fact that he’d lost his girlfriend to an alpha from the lacrosse team. Tomorrow it would finally be legal when he and Scott sneaked out to the woods and drank half a bottle of Captain Morgan. Not that they’d done that in a while. Scott was busy with his girlfriend Allison – not that Stiles resented her, she was great for Scott – and Stiles wasn’t meshing too well with Scott’s new friends Lydia and Jackson. Danny he liked just fine, but Jackson was kind of a bully and it wasn’t going to get any better when Stiles stepped out as a substandard member of the male population tomorrow.

He groaned and threw himself back onto the bed, causing a resurgence in his cramps that made him clutch his stomach and groan some more.

It was going to be a long day.

 

When Stiles woke up the next morning and turned his attention to his watch, he almost tried to go back to sleep again. _Thursday,_ read the little screen. _Thursday, Thursday, Thursday,_ but all he could hear in his head over a pounding noise was _doomsday, doomsday, doomsday._

He sat up in bed and carefully avoided looking in the mirror as he tried to prepare himself mentally for the coming day. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and noticed that his stomach pains had died down to a manageable level. He was okay. He was okay. He was okay.

It was time to look in the mirror and see what colour his eyes were.

Today was his presenting day, and his eyes would glow all day to tell others what he was declaring as. He would also smell different, and would give off a certain scent that could be connected to one of the genders. He, in turn, would be able to smell everyone else differently, would be able to smell pheromones and detect peoples’ feelings, would be more in tune with his instincts.

His beta instincts.

Because that was exactly what he expected to see when he looked in the mirror. A pair of bright gold beta eyes staring back at him, a painful reminder of his mother and a disappointment to his father.

He couldn’t sit in bed all day. He had to accept his beta-ness and move on and hope his dad would be understanding. He would go to school and he would suck it up and he would get on with his life until he could earn enough money to buy himself an island where nobody would judge him for something he couldn’t control.

He opened his eyes.

And freaked the fuck out.


	6. On The Subject Of Covalent Structures

It was Stiles’s presentation day today, Derek remembered, but he wasn’t sure if that meant he would be in school or not. On the one hand, John would be let down and possibly angry, which might mean Stiles stayed home. On the other hand, John might send him to school so his supposedly inferior beta-ness could stare everyone else in the face until Stiles went crazy. He wasn’t sure which was worse. He didn’t want Stiles to be bullied but he also wanted to see him again today and make sure he was okay.

There was some kind of commotion around the junior lockers that meant he was late to first period. He had intended to call Stiles to see how he was holding up but there was such a crowd that it took him ages to shove through. He slammed his stuff down and checked his timetable again. Chemistry was third period today. Third period was his one and only class with Stiles Stilinski, the kid (who was no longer a kid) he’d grown to feel very protective of.

He wondered nervously if he would feel just as protective if Stiles, by some miracle, actually did present alpha. He hoped that his concern was founded on the fact that Stiles was his friend, in a roundabout sort of way, and not because his alpha was getting off on protecting the weak.

He tapped his foot impatiently against the desk. Today was make or break for Stiles and he wanted to be there to help him through it.

Stiles had had to fight his way through a crowd of people clamouring to get a look at the glowing-eyed freak. He hadn’t seen Scott, just a ton of freshmen who hadn’t declared yet trying to get a look at his eyes and it was pissing him off.

He kept his eyes downcast all through first period, and sat right at the back of the class away from the ceiling fans. He was able to avoid detection and had taken many steps in order to do so, applying deodorant until the smell was offensive to his own nose, keeping his head bowed and staring fixedly at his feet. That way, nobody saw his eyes and he didn’t have to advertise to half of Beacon Hills that he was kind of a freak.

His dad had been shocked speechless – for a while. The horribly tense silence lasted ten seconds – it felt more like ten years – before John shoved him against a wall, yelled something incoherent at him and stalked out in exasperation and anger. Stiles was going to have a bruise but all in all it had gone better with John than Stiles had expected.

That didn’t mean that school was going to be a walk in the park.

He was on his own through first-period biology, the teacher didn’t bother him and he focused on his work. He sat with Scott through second-period English and Scott, being the good, supportive friend that he was, helped sort of shield Stiles’s face from prying eyes and discreetly scented Stiles to tone down the new body odour.

But when he set his books down in third-period Chemistry it was Derek, not Scott, who joined him.

“Go away,” Stiles tried to hiss politely while staring out the window. “Scott’s been scenting me and he sits there.”

Derek took a short sniff through his nose. “Yeah, you smell like him. And did you bathe in deodorant?”

Stiles flapped a hand uselessly. “Something like that, now please, Derek –”

“Hey, I’m trying to look out for you,” Derek said gently. “How’d it go with your dad?”

Something in Stiles’s brain said _fuck it_ and he turned around to stare at Derek with his newly glowing eyes. “How do you _think_?”

 

 

 

Derek was not prepared for the surprise that Stiles sprung on him, and, boy, was it a surprise.

When Stiles whipped his head around to stare at Derek with his electric-blue eyes, Derek’s brain actually did a loop-the-loop. Stiles might be staring at him with his face drawn tight in pain and fear but Derek had never seen such beautiful eyes. The harsh white school lamps didn’t flatter Stiles’s eyes – here they were a flat brown, but Derek had seen them be amber, whiskey, melted chocolate, all depending on the light. But this – this was no trick of the light. Stiles’s eyes were shining sky-blue and Derek knew what it meant.

An omega. Stiles was presenting as an omega.

Derek let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “They’re beautiful.” He said quietly, but it came out half-croaked when his voice failed him.

Stiles was unfazed. “I don’t care if I’m _pretty_ , do you know what this means?”

Derek tried to tear his gaze from Stiles’s irises but was unable. “Yeah, I know what it means. Are you okay?”

“I’ve been walking with my eyes on the floor all day,” Stiles muttered angrily. “My dad is – well, I don’t even know, that’s the problem, he’s mad or something – I stink, I got mobbed in the corridor by a bunch of freshmen who’d never seen an omega before, and it turns out my stomach pains were because of the fact that some of the tissue in my body had to literally rearrange itself.”

Derek had forgotten that. Omegas were built to take an alpha’s knot, but of course the body would need to change in order for that to happen. “Well that explains that.” Derek replied weakly. His brain still wasn’t entirely functioning after being mesmerized by Stiles’s new look. _It’s your alpha,_ he told himself, _you know how alphas get around omegas,_ but he wasn’t even sure he believed himself. A thought occurred to Derek. “Did your dad hurt you?”

“What – why?”

Stiles had dodged the question, which Derek was learning generally meant the answer to the question would be bad. “ _Did your dad hurt you?”_

He had accidentally used a little of the alpha voice in his attempt to check on Stiles. The words hung heavy and he felt bad immediately, knowing that as an omega, the alpha tone would be especially strong on Stiles. But he didn’t feel bad enough to apologize. He _had_ to make sure Stiles was okay. He _had_ to. Because Stiles was his friend and alphas protected omegas.

“He pushed me into a wall, but –”

“He pushed you into a wall?” Derek growled. They were well into the lesson but Derek had no interest in paying attention. Scott kept shooting them furtive looks but he didn’t care. He was kind of surprising himself if he was honest. Derek’s alpha had gotten one look at those eyes and immediately decided that Stiles was his to protect and it worried him a little, but not as much as it probably should have.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have a bruise, but it’s okay, re–”

“It’s not okay,” Derek fumed, “He’s your dad and your alpha. He should be protecting you.”

“Okay, you need to relax, man, because he’s not ‘my’ alpha, he’s my dad and he’s a dick but I can take care –”

“The world is an ugly place for omegas,” Derek said, finally tearing his eyes away from Stiles. Finally. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, tell me about it. My dad wants me to have the perfect alpha-beta family like he did, and he doesn’t believe in guys dating girls higher in the hierarchy than themselves. You can try and guess what he thinks of his son, who is not only bisexual but also literally unable to date any lower in the genders. It messes with his worldview a little.”

Stiles was trying to calm Derek down by drawing him into conversation and it was kind of working. “Do betas and omegas not go together?”

“Nope,” Stiles popped the ‘p’. He had spent his break doing internet research on omegas. He hadn’t know much about them because there weren’t very many of them; the last omega who went to Beacon Hills graduated four years ago. “Omegas only ever mate with alphas. My dad is trying to decide which he would rather: his son date an alpha girl, which he thinks is unnatural, or an alpha guy, which he also thinks is unnatural. It would be funny if he weren’t so angry about it.”

Derek could tell Stiles was downplaying the situation, but he went along with it. He opened his mouth to tell Stiles about a friend-of-a-friend who was also an omega when Stiles’s gaze turned to Jackson Whittemore.

Jackson’s jaw went slack for a moment before his eyes went wide. He stared at Stiles’s irises and shook with silent laughter, pointing at Stiles as though it were the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

Unfortunately, this attracted the teacher’s attention. “Mr. Whittemore, do you have something to share on the subject of covalent structures?”

Jackson ignored the question entirely and continued to point at Stiles. “Sir, have you _seen_ Stilinski? The pride of the Beacon County Sheriff’s Department and his freaking neon eyes?”

“Knock it off, asshole,” Derek shot at him, “Just ’cause your eyes look like bad special effects from a horror movie.”

There was a collective intake of air as the class gasped. There were a few whispers of “Ooh, burn” and they only seemed to infuriate Jackson.

“Yeah, _horror movie,_ ” Jackson retorted eventually, “Not some dumb omega bitch. Red eyes are intimidating, like alphas are supposed to be. What the hell is he trying to do with his stupid Smurf look?”

Scott launched himself out of his seat, grabbed Jackson’s collar and probably unconsciously put on the red-eye glow as he said, “You leave him alone, you dick.”

Jackson grinned condescendingly. “Ooh, scary.” His own eyes lit up red and he turned to look at Stiles. “See, Bilinski? This is how it’s done. Not that you’ll ever be good enough for anything like that. Omegas are useless, everybody knows that.”

Stiles had been holding on to Derek’s wrist to keep him from jumping up and helping Scott but it wasn’t enough after that insult. Derek was over there in a flash, canines extended and eyes ablaze as he yanked Jackson’s head back by the hair. Exposing the neck was a submissive gesture, and Jackson’s bobbing Adam’s apple was on display for all the world to see. It was humiliating, an embarrassing position for an alpha to be caught in, especially one who spent so much time posing. “Say useless one more time.” Derek’s voice was calm and eerily quiet, but there was a definite edge to it and he was only just restraining his alpha. Insults like that would lead to Stiles getting hurt, emotionally or physically, when dickheads like Jackson decided to up their game.

Sufficiently humiliated as he was, Jackson clenched his jaw and said nothing, glaring at Derek resentfully. Derek didn’t smell any fear from Jackson, but he did from Stiles, and his priority was to look after Stiles, so he released Jackson’s hair and sat back down with a low growl.

“Are you okay?” He asked Stiles. Stiles nodded mutely in response.

Like most sane betas Harris hadn’t wanted to get in the way of an alpha squabble, especially not one that could turn violent. He eyed all four boys and carried on teaching as if nothing had happened.

 


	7. Alpha Instincts

Stiles was a hot commodity again in the lunchbreak. His school’s collection of alpha assholes had taken to calling him ‘bitch’, a term especially rude when used about an omega, and Stiles couldn’t help but feel a little weirded out by all the day’s events. Since chemistry he had walked with his head held high and he heard people whisper in the corridors. He had gone from invisibility to notoriety and his head was spinning.  

At least his scent was covered.

Stiles had read somewhere on the internet that omega scent had the effect of driving compatible alphas crazy. He didn’t believe it – alphas had to have more control than _that_ – but when he set his food down next to Derek he decided to ask him about.

Derek, of course, looked sufficiently confused that Stiles was sitting with him and not with Scott. The truth was that Stiles wanted to be as far away from Jackson as possible but also that he was starting to appreciate Derek a little. The guy was looking out for him, which was definitely useful right now. “Okay, do you know anything about all this omega stuff? It’s kinda hard researching on the internet, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”

Derek furrowed his eyebrows. “What’s bothering you?”

Stiles made a face. “Something about omega scent having an effect on alphas? I mean it seems kind of outlandish, really…”

“That one’s true,” Derek replied almost immediately, taking a bite of his pizza. “I’ve never actually smelled omega scent on its own, but yeah. It’s designed to make alphas want to mate omegas and from what I hear it works.”

“What, all the time?” Stiles eyebrows shot up, “Constantly? Nonstop? Man, I can’t keep up with that.”

Derek smirked. “Being around omegas makes alpha instincts kick in, and alpha instincts can mean a lot of things. And it’s different for different people.”

Stiles frowned. “How?”                                              

Derek thought for a minute. “Okay, take your presentation as an example. You walk around the house smelling like omega and your dad’s alpha thinks _responsibility_ and gets mad. He thinks you’re weak and it pisses his alpha off. You declare omega and my alpha wants to protect you. It manifests differently.”

“What about Scott? He’s an alpha.”

“And he threw himself at Jackson when he was being a dick. Some people are more protective than others. Jackson’s reaction to you being omega was to pick on you and Scott and I sensed a threat. We reacted to it.”

Stiles ran a hand through his hair. “This is a lot to take in.”

Derek snorted. “Wait ’till you get to the heat part.”

Stiles’s hand came down on the table in surprise. “No way, that _can’t_ be real.”

“It is,” Derek grinned at him, “Omega heat is a thing. And it’s apparently crazy.”

“Fuck,” Stiles moaned, putting his head in his hands. “I’m a horny enough teenager as it is.”

Derek laughed – yes, Derek Hale actually laughed, and Stiles looked up between his fingers to take in the sight and the music of his laughter. “What’s so funny?”

“You are,” Derek replied, with a full, toothy smile on his face. “Stiles, when you go into heat every compatible alpha around will literally fight each other to mate you. I mean, that has be good _somewhere,_ right?” His smile seemed to fade and his eyes darkened for a moment, but it was almost imperceptible. Only Stiles with his excellent omega senses was able to see it.

“They’ll only want that because of how I smell!” Stiles replied stressfully. “And what if they want to _claim_ me, I mean, that is some freaky shit right there –”

“Claiming can be a good thing,” Derek said, in a forced offhanded voice, “It shows other alphas not to mess with you.”

“Somebody has to literally bite me on the shoulder hard enough to leave a scar! Don’t you think that’s a little weird?” Stiles had been thinking about this. To leave a mark like that, how much would it hurt to be claimed by an alpha? Didn’t it bleed? Would an alpha prioritize their omega’s comfort over their own desire to claim? Did he want an alpha who didn’t?

“Mate and claim is hardwired into alphas,” Derek said, but the smile was completely gone from his face. “It’s instinct.”

“You don’t claim betas, but suddenly because I’m a – a _bitch_ – suddenly it’s okay to go around doing what you want, when you want?”

Stiles was getting nervous, his voice rising in volume, and Derek knew that if other people heard this conversation Stiles would kick himself. He reached out and grabbed Stiles’s shoulders. “Stiles, listen, it’s okay. Any alpha who tries to mate _or_ claim you without your consent is a disgusting piece of crap. The jail sentence is heavy.”

Stiles scoffed, but voice returned to a normal, lowered volume. “The last time an alpha was sentenced for that was 1992, but there have been hundreds of attacks on omegas recorded since, and probably tons more that weren’t reported.”

Stiles was right. The law and reality were two very different things. Alphas had a habit of claiming that they couldn’t control themselves or that the omega had wanted it, and to Derek, it was repulsive. “Don’t call yourself that. A bitch. Don’t.”

“Why not?” Stiles sighed and hung his head. “I’ve heard it said about me six times today. If the rest of the world is going to say it, I might as well.”

“There’s a difference between you and the rest of the world.” Derek supplied in a subdued tone. Stiles couldn’t tell what was going through his head, when normally he was pretty good at that. Stiles was a people person but Derek Hale was hard to read.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

Derek’s lip curled in half a snarl. “I can’t stop you from calling yourself names, but if anyone else tries it, they’re dead.”

Stiles stared at Derek and realized he was seeing what the term ‘alpha instincts’ really meant.

 

 

 

Stiles was very good at avoiding his father but this was so easy it occurred to him that John might be avoiding him back.

He had found his birthday present – two new parts for his computer that he’d been missing and a gift certificate for pizza for two at Stiles’s favourite pizza place – left out on the kitchen table and it saddened him to open them alone. Scott had offered to come over and hang out but Stiles honestly felt like he needed some time on his own to process his thoughts.

Which was a mistake. The house was dark and quiet and no amount of video games or music livened it up.

Stiles sighed and went to look at his eyes in the mirror. They were pretty, he thought, and was reminded of Derek’s slack-jawed look when he’d revealed himself in class. He had thought it was because Derek had never seen an omega before, but Stiles wasn’t going to forget how “they’re beautiful” had tumbled out of Derek’s mouth. He had made a new friend, a new friend who apparently felt very protective of him.

Stiles wasn’t sure what to make of that. His brain was telling him that he was an independent guy and had dealt with bullies before, nothing was new and it was business as usual. But his omega liked Derek worrying about him, thrilled at how Derek defended him. His omega accepted the overprotective alpha and was ecstatic at the thought.

He did some internet research on omegas and the public opinion of an omega but he came up not much wiser. Everything contradicted everything else. He wanted to know what life would be like for him, wanted to see how things would be different, but it appeared that wasn’t something you could find on the internet. Unsurprising, really. He sighed and sat back in his seat, staring absently out the window.

The sun was half down over the horizon, bathing the world in long shadows. Once the sun was down his eyes would stop glowing, his body having made the world aware of its change. He showered and decided that the only way to see what people thought of omegas was to experience life as one. So he went for a walk downtown.

He’d walked this route tons of times before – along the main street, down to the corner for churros – and it was a slightly roundabout route. It gave him time to think and a breath of fresh air and all in all took about half an hour.

Stiles had made it ten minutes’ leisurely amble down the road before he felt unease creeping up on him.

He knew omegas were more sensitive than others to pheromones and guessed that he should listen to his gut reaction. He’d always been good at reading people, even before he declared, but an omega could smell someone’s intentions from over a mile away. It complicated things when there were lots of people out; a whole plethora of feelings assaulted Stiles, even on this quiet night. Anticipation, resentment, fatigue, possessiveness, desire, he smelled them all, and it didn’t take long before something he didn’t like so much pervaded his nostrils.

The scent was strong, not that close by but whoever was feeling it was feeling very strongly. It was a harsh, sour mixture of aggression and arousal and an undercurrent of possessiveness that screamed _mine, mine, mine!_ And it worried Stiles. He wasn’t sure why but he had a nagging feeling this had something to do with him.

He cast his gaze around and saw who the scent belonged to. An alpha in his late twenties coming from a side street on the opposite side of the road. There was a sense of purpose to his stride and he was staring directly at Stiles. Stiles squinted. No, he didn’t know him.

He unlocked his phone in his pocket, kept his head down and continued walking. He had Scott on speed dial and his brain was telling him that he was being irrational. So some guy was feeling horny. So what?

He made as if to pass the guy on the street but was instead grabbed by the shoulders and held up against a bus shelter. Stiles panicked and began to yell.

“Shut up, omega,” the guy hissed, his eyes glowing alpha red. He had used the alpha tone and Stiles was having a hard time fighting the weight of the words, the command, the compulsion to do as he was told. He used one hand to keep Stiles’s chest pinned against the glass of the shelter and the other to run a hand along Stiles’s throat. “An unclaimed omega.” He sighed happily. “You’re askin’ for it, walkin’ round and smelling like _that._ Do you know how fuckin’ good you smell?”

Stiles swallowed nervously and fumbled with his phone. He accidentally hit a key – the wrong key – and the phone beeped. The alpha laughed, grabbed Stiles’s phone and threw it on the ground. “Oh no, kid, I ain’t messin’ around. You’re just some omega with no bite mark, and I’m your alpha now. I got a knot that needs takin’ care of, and you smell too darn good to be runnin’ round all unmated like that.”

It occurred to Stiles that while the guy had his chest pinned his hands were pretty much free. It was going to be difficult, since this guy had like four inches and fifty pounds on him, but for all his alpha strength he couldn’t predict the future. Stiles had the element of surprise.

Stiles gripped him behind the neck and yanked his body down so the alpha’s stomach met with a well-placed knee. The alpha stumbled and Stiles took the opportunity to land him a hard kick in the stomach. “You and your knot can go to hell.” Stiles snarled, snatched up his phone, and took off running as fast as his legs would carry him in the direction of his house.

The guy stumbled but the pain kept him from following. Stiles kept the speed up right until he landed on his front doorstep. The door was slightly ajar and he didn’t think to sniff to see who it was. He assumed it was Scott, dropping something off or whatever.

He let himself in, closed the door, locked and chained it before collapsing in a heap on the floor. He put his head in his hands. Ten minutes tops, and already this omega thing had gotten him into trouble. How the hell was he supposed to live like this?

“Hey, uh – are you okay?” Derek was standing in the foyer, looking at Stiles confusedly.

Stiles scrambled to his feet and wiped away the slight moisture that had beaded in his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, uhm, thanks, Derek.”

Derek cocked an eyebrow. “Why were you running?”

“Running?” Stiles asked innocently, before realizing that he was panting and red in the face. “Yeah, no, I run sometimes, y’know. When I want to run.”

Derek took a short sniff of the air, frowned, and then a deeper breath. He stepped towards Stiles and smelled him. “You smell like fear.”

“Fear? Me? No way.” Stiles grinned unconvincingly. Fucking hell, he was usually a good liar. Why couldn’t he just lie to Derek?

Derek’s expression grew worried and his concern saturated the air. “Stiles, you smell like someone else. Another alpha. God, what –”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Stiles tried desperately to downplay it. “It’s all good, man, no need to –”

Derek closed the distance between them and moved in to smell Stiles’s neck.

And promptly groaned out loud.

“Derek?” Stiles wasn’t generally opposed to this proximity – God knew Derek looked like a male model – but after earlier it was actually making him uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. His omega was screaming at him to enjoy the body heat Derek was giving off, but his mind wanted him away. Not too far away, and not away for ever. Just some space. “Okay, Derek, can we –”

Derek took two steps back and set up what Stiles viewed as a slightly overkill personal space boundary. “Stiles, you – you smell amazing, _God,_ I’ve never smelled anything that good, what the hell –”

Stiles paled. “Please don’t tell me every alpha is going to react this way.” He wasn’t sure he could handle everybody sniffing at him. He wasn’t catnip for alphas, for fuck’s sake.

That drew Derek’s attention. “You smell like another alpha. What have you been doing?”

Stiles tried to derail the conversation. Not lie to Derek, per se, but he wasn’t sure he wanted Derek to know. He didn’t want Derek to think badly of him. “You know, when someone comes home smelling like someone else, it’s generally considered impolite to ask for details.”

Derek growled, an actual rumble in his chest that Stiles felt go right through him. It made his omega weak at the knees but he forced himself to stay sane. “You don’t smell like you’ve mated, Stiles, you smell like somebody else and like you’re freaking the fuck out. You ran home. What the hell is going on?”

Stiles was having a hard time digging himself out of this one. “Well, I ordered fries, and when the guy gave me my fries he touched me, ’cause I almost dropped them so he had to like grab my wrists, and then on the way home I bumped into this guy and I spilled ketchup all over him and he got mad so I ran.”

“Damn it, Stiles, you don’t smell like fries!” Derek slammed a fist sideways against the wall. Stiles jumped. In no time at all Derek was standing right in front of him again. Stiles took a step back and found his back to be up against the door. Derek didn’t seem to realize – he looked a little distracted, actually – and he followed Stiles until Stiles was basically pinned again and couldn’t really escape. “Stiles, what happened? Are you okay?”

The proximity was too much and it felt too close to the alpha at the bus stop. Stiles screwed up his eyes and lashed out, whirling at Derek with his fists. He wasn’t aware he was letting out a painful, drawn-out yell until Derek had backed few paces away, staring at him worriedly. Stiles leaned back against the door and covered his face with one hand. He was running on adrenaline and it was turning painful, limbs whining and muscles complaining.

“Somebody cornered you,” Derek said. It was more of a statement than a question. “Somebody tried to hurt you, didn’t they?”

Stiles couldn’t hold it back. A tear fell down his face and he wiped his eyes indignantly. “Yeah.”

Derek’s jaw clenched but he approached slowly as Stiles fought back tears. “Hey, hey, Stiles, listen. Can I hug you?”

Stiles was so weirded out he didn’t even know where to begin. “Hug me?”

“Yeah,” Derek continued gently. “Omegas are reassured by physical contact, and often also by alpha pheromones. I think it might help you feel better. Is that okay?”

Stiles thought for a minute, wiped another tear away, and nodded. “I think so.”

Derek made sure to approach him slowly, not wanting to cause panic, before he took Stiles in his arms. Stiles’s omega relaxed right into it, and Stiles himself felt a cloud of calmness surround him, like everything was going to be okay. Derek was right about alpha scent – he smelled amazing, but also like safety. He smelled like _good_ and _safe_ and the scent equivalent of everything being just fine. He sighed, buried his face in Derek’s shoulder, and felt the tears stop coming. Derek tilted his head forward, pushing his nose onto Stiles’s shoulder, and Stiles closed his eyes. He almost felt content.

When they eventually broke the hug Stiles felt worlds better. Derek’s eyes were on him constantly. “Better?”

He nodded. “Yeah. A lot, actually. Thanks.” He smiled gratefully.

Derek smiled softly in return. “But now you gotta tell me what happened, because I am freaking out.”

Stiles relayed the story, and at the end Derek stormed out into the street, eyes on fire and teeth extended, looking for someone who fit Stiles’s description. Stiles took hold of his shoulder firmly. “Derek, listen, there’s no point. He’s not here and there’s no point anyway.”

“There is a point. Show him he can’t just treat omegas like that. It’s disgusting.”

Stiles mulled over his next thought before voicing it, and when he did, it was very quietly. “Derek…it’s not my fault, is it? I mean, the smell, and alphas and control –”

They went inside, Derek’s expression softening and his alpha shelved. “Stiles, it’s not your fault. It’s _never_ your fault. Don’t blame this on yourself, blame it on that scumbag out there.”

“But alphas have trouble with control,” he continued in that small voice. He didn’t want Derek thinking about him like he was doing it for attention. “I didn’t put on deodorant ’cause I just got out the shower, so the smell must have been really strong –”

“Stiles, listen to me,” Derek kept eye contact as they sat on the sofas. “Everybody will smell you differently. To me, you smell incredible. Your scent is designed to attract alphas and to be honest, Stiles, I’ve never felt so out of control in my life as when I smelled you earlier. But you don't see me attacking people.”

Stiles bit his lip. “Will I smell like this to everyone?”

Derek grimaced. “The attraction part only works on those you’re compatible with, and compatibility is defined by how different your genes are from each other’s. The more different the genes the better you smell, because nature wants to keep the gene pool as wide as possible. It’s better for future offspring. So the smell won’t work on your family, because their genes are so similar to yours. But other than that – yeah, pretty much. And the better an alpha smells to you, the more compatible you are.”

Stiles hung his head. “My deodorant bill just got a lot bigger.”

Derek laughed. Stiles detected something like relief in his tone. Twice in one day he had made Derek Hale laugh – quite the accomplishment. “You know there are scent suppressants you can take.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but they’re illegal, and I _can’t_ keep illegal drugs in my room. My dad’s the Sheriff and he _will_ call for a raid.”

They laughed again. It transpired that Derek had been in his house because Stiles had left his jacket behind the other day when he woke up in Derek’s guest room. They talked and ate (Stiles cooked spaghetti Bolognese) and Derek went home. He was reluctant to leave Stiles alone – what if that alpha guy came back, he insisted – but Stiles showed him how the door could deadlock and the street was empty and reminded him that they had chemistry homework and, grumbling, Derek left. And Stiles went to bed feeling altogether better about his presentation. It was bad, but not so bad, he thought, and he fell asleep with a smile on his face.


	8. From Not to Hot

School was rapidly becoming a weird place to be.

Derek didn’t mind the whole classes part. He breezed through on decent grades, no big deal. He didn’t have too many friends – especially now that Erica and Boyd had gotten together, they were often hanging out making heart eyes at each other and Derek found himself sitting alone frequently. He could’ve sat with the basketball team, they liked him, but he wasn’t friendly enough to just integrate and he didn’t find them interesting regardless.

The miserable part was having to watch Stiles. His wolf yipped and approved of seeing him, sat with him in chemistry and loved seeing him smile, but it was everyone _else._

It was only yesterday that Stiles had declared omega and the entire school seemed to be obsessed with him.

When Stiles opened his locker in the break he was surprised to find things inside that weren’t books, comics or forgotten water bottles. He found balloons, a teddy bear, a box of chocolates, a movie ticket, several bouquets of flowers, and a post-it note with a heart drawn on it.

Stiles was a modest person and was of course appropriately dumbfounded. For one thing, who had left him all this stuff? And secondly, how did they get into his locker?

Derek was strolling by in the corridor – he was trying to convince himself that he had walked the long way around the junior lockers because he wanted to use the vending machine and not because Stiles would be there – when he happened to notice Stiles’s bemusement as three balloons bounced out and hit him the face. They were met with murmurs of, “What the hell?”

Derek sauntered over. “An admirer?” His alpha was not liking the idea, roaring in disapproval, and Derek bit back a growl.

Stiles sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t…I don’t even…Jesus. It’s an alpha thing, isn’t it? I read about this. Showing me they can provide. Ugh.” He lifted the teddy bear, brought it to his nose and sniffed it. He pulled a face and handed it to Derek to smell. “Who does this smell like to you?”

Derek cocked an eyebrow but took the teddy bear. “You know an omega’s senses are way more advanced than mine, right? If you can’t get a scent, nobody can.”

“No, no, I can get a scent, I just don’t know who it’s from.” Stiles picked up the chocolates. “These are fancy. Man, I can’t take all this stuff…”

Derek handed him back the teddy bear. “Someone from the swim team, I think. Alpha.”

Stiles sighed and began to take all the new additions out of his locker. Someone had gone to the trouble of buying helium balloons instead of just blowing up their own – that was going to be a disaster. “I’m not keeping this crap.”

Derek smirked. “Rejecting their advances? Bold move. Can I ask why?”

“I was literally invisible on Wednesday,” Stiles told him exasperatedly, arms full of presents as he piled them on the floor. “And suddenly I declare omega and alphas everywhere throw presents at me. I’m a person, hi, yes, I’m Stiles, I’m more than _just_ an omega and you can’t break into my locker, leave balloons and think we’re good.”

“You want somebody who goes for personality?”

“I want somebody who recognizes that I _have_ one,” Stiles huffed, but Derek knew it wasn’t aimed at him. He stacked all the gifts on the floor beside his locker, releasing the balloons. They floated absently along the corridor. “It’s only been two periods and already four people have gone all alpha weird on me.”

Derek’s alpha was unsurprisingly extremely pissed, and there was a vague rumbling in the back of his head that sounded like _mine._ But Derek’s logical human brain was pissed as well. Just because Stiles was an omega didn’t mean he was fair game for anyone and everyone, wherever, whenever. Didn’t mean he wasn’t a person. Derek tried to keep his tone light and casual. “What did they do?”

“One girl grabbed my ass,” Stiles shrugged, but Derek could tell it bothered him. “Two guys and a girl made – uhm – suggestions. Alphas are weird, dude.”

“What kind of suggestions?” Derek’s alpha was champing at the bit, angry and ready to go.

“I don’t think you even wanna –”

Derek fought back the urge to seize hold of Stiles’s shoulders. He wanted to let Stiles know that he was serious about protecting him but after last night’s ordeal, sudden grabby movements probably weren’t a good idea. Instead he focused on keeping his voice steady next time he spoke. “Stiles. What suggestions?”

A mild blush covered the tops of Stiles’s ears, but Derek didn’t smell any embarrassment in particular. He was hardly getting any emotional scents from Stiles at all, really. The boy was keeping them in check. Impressive for someone just presented. “They all gave a vivid description of something I could do with my mouth. Like I said, alphas are weird. Not that that – mouth stuff – is weird, it’s just – oh my god, I’m rambling, Jesus, I…” he trailed off hopelessly.

Derek plastered his trademark snarky smirk onto his face. “It’s a power thing. I think.” He tried to act like he totally didn’t get it, but it was part of his primal alpha and he did, he understood it well enough. Alphas got off on submission from their partners, and receiving head was almost a display of power. It wasn’t the inner wolf per se, it was something else, some mixture of the alpha and the human persona, but most alphas adored even the thought of getting oral, because it became so submissive on the partner’s side. To receive from an omega was even more so. To receive from Stiles…

Derek promptly derailed that train of thought before it could arrive at the station. Unfortunately it was not derailed fast enough that could guarantee it wouldn’t be slipping into his thoughts later on. _Fuck._

“Well, yeah, I figured, but to be honest life would be much easier if everyone would stop thinking with their knots and start using their goddamned heads.” Stiles sighed, frustrated.

Derek made an agreeing noise in the back of his throat before changing the topic. “Hey, are you feeling okay? Since, you know, last night?”

Stiles blinked up at him and Derek was struck by those honey-coloured eyes of his. So inquisitive, so analytical. So pretty. The blue had been piercing and gorgeous but Stiles’s eyes on every other occasion were gentle and doe-like. “To be honest, no. Alpha scent is just really messing with my head at the moment. Scott thinks I’m mad at him but I just – it just all comes back, you know? And I’m freaking out, and I just don’t want to think about it.”

Derek made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Stiles, if my scent is making you uncomfortable you should’ve said something, I’d leave you alone or whatever. I don’t want to upset you and if it reminds you of that then I’ll –”

“No,” Stiles said quickly, “No, yours is okay. To be honest – and I know this might freak you out and I’m sorry and if it’s too weird you can just pretend not to know me – your smell calms me down. I don’t know, I think since last night or something, but it really helped. I just felt – relaxed. Like everything was gonna be okay. And yeah, sorry for being an omega freak but I wanted to tell you, I wanted you to know.”

Derek smiled, a soft, genuine smile that he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt on his face before. He kind of liked it. “It’s not weird. You’re not a freak. I’m glad I can help.” A thought occurred to him. “Here.” He moved in for a hug.

Derek Hale was not a renowned hugger. That much was known to the world, or at least to Beacon Hills High, so he wasn’t entirely surprised by the stares he could feel boring into his back or the muttered comments or the whispered gossip. He did find, however, that he did not care. All his attention was focused on the omega in his arms who was having a good long sniff at his shoulder and throat and who was easing into it, heart rate slowing, muscles relaxing, with a contented sigh.

Derek wanted to bury his face in Stiles’s neck and smell that delicious omega scent that was working on him like some kind of freaking drug but he also wanted to be careful with Stiles. The omega had been through a lot and the last thing he needed was the one alpha he trusted – and hell if Derek’s wolf didn’t approve of _that_ thought – losing it and trying to do something to him. Which Derek was thinking very hard about not thinking about.

Instead he kept his nose at normal height and tried to discern how much delightful omega scent Stiles was exuding from a distance. The answer was not much because his nose was irritated by a thick layer of deodorant. He understood it, of course; given what the smell had done to that alpha on the street yesterday, who knew what would happen to a bunch of horny teenagers, but that didn’t mean he or his alpha liked it.

They finally broke apart and Stiles gave him a happy smile with a half-tired look on his face. He looked kind of high but Derek knew then and there that there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to see that smile. “Hey, do I smell okay to you?”

“You smell like deodorant.” It wasn’t a complaint, not entirely. A baser part of Derek wanted to drink in that incredible scent, that Stiles smell that just smelled like _home_ and _right_ and _good,_ but the more rational part of his brain told him that Stiles had to be around other people today and he had to stay safe.

A part of Derek fantasized briefly about squirreling Stiles away somewhere, away from other alphas and from everyone else, and keeping him safe. And all to himself.

_This is what he meant when he said ‘thinking with your knot’, you idiot._

“That is kind of what I was going for,” Stiles grinned. “Less catnip, more Axe.”

Derek’s expression turned incredulous. “Axe? Really? What are you, thirteen?”

“Hey!” Stiles said indignantly. “I ran out, okay, and I grabbed the only thing I could find!”

The bell rang, signalling the end of the break. Stiles and Derek headed off to their respective classes. Derek felt decidedly more triumphant than when he had first laid eyes on Stiles today, and he allowed himself to feel smug. Stiles felt safe with him when he didn’t with others. His alpha approved and Derek grinned to himself, a full-on grin with all teeth, the one he knew intimidated people, and watched the odd looks he got and just kept on grinning.

 

 

“Hey, Peter? Can I ask you something?”

Peter was lounged out on the couch watching crappy TV. He’d had a bad day at work, apparently – something about one of the interns turning him down – and was onto his second whisky. “It’s not the birds and the bees, is it, Derek? I feel like we’ve been over this one.”

Derek threw him an irritated look from the other sofa. “No, it’s not the birds and the bees. No, uh, one of my buddies from the basketball team thinks he’s getting a rut, and he’s never really had one before, so he was asking if I knew where to get a hold of scent suppressants. Figured I’d ask you.” Alpha ruts were unpredictable things. Most people had them, some didn’t. Sometimes they were twice a year, sometimes more, sometimes less. Studies linking them to omega heats were inconclusive, mainly because there weren’t really enough omegas to do full tests. A few thousand were needed for that and most omegas weren’t interested in being experimented on.

Peter rubbed a hand across his eyes and yawned. “General scent suppressants, or rut specifically?”

Derek frowned. “Won’t the general ones work for ruts too?”

“They will,” Peter assured him. “But the rut ones have bromine in them to kill the libido. Dangerous as hell if you ask me.”

“Then the general ones would be great.” Stiles would be pissed if he got him suppressants that also happened to kill his libido. It would be funny but not altogether worth it.

Peter waved a hand and brought his phone out. “I’ll text my guy.”

“Actually, if I just pass on the number, I think that would be better. He’s not 100% sure if he needs them yet.”

Peter shrugged noncommittally. “Suit yourself. I’ll text it to you.”

Derek inclined his head. “Thanks.”

“But if you ever ask your uncle Peter for drugs again, I’m telling your sister.” Peter grinned and winked, and Derek smirked back.


	9. This Is The World We Live In

Saturday came and went to no great fanfare in the Stilinski house.

Stiles was still a little iffy on the whole alpha scent thing so he didn’t call Scott yet. He was feeling a lot better, just not quite 100%, so he spent the day doing nothing except a little homework. He did some research into omegas, played some games, read a little, but other than that it was a pleasantly lazy Saturday. Sunday, however, was much more eventful.

Well, he was bound to run into his dad sooner or later.

He woke up Sunday morning and found to his surprise that his father was not at work. Something about the day off. Stiles yawned and padded past him and reached up into the cupboard for pancake mix. He had mixed it up and got the pan ready and was blearily preparing to fry his breakfast when his dad said, “Son, is there anything you want to tell me?”

The Sheriff had used his dad voice, the voice he used when he knew Stiles had done something but wanted to drag it out of his son inch by painful inch. Or, as Stiles liked to put it, when he jumped to conclusions.

“Uhm…” Stiles didn’t see what possible big revelations there could be that he hadn’t already pitched. “Don’t think so?”

John sighed. “Stiles, when I came home Thursday night the house smelled like Derek Hale and you smelled like another alpha. The front door was banged up. What the hell happened?”

He’d dented the door? Shit. He hadn’t even realized. This definitely didn’t look good.

He decided with some reluctance to come clean to his dad for once. He didn’t see the point in lying to him about this and who knew, maybe it would help him out. Maybe it would make the Sheriff sympathetic to his newfound apparent status inferiority rather than ashamed of his omega son. Maybe the Sheriff would go out and catch the dickhead who thought it was okay to attack people on the street.

Or maybe not.

“Stiles, what the hell were you thinking?” John yelled. “You’re an omega, son! You can’t just roll around town, you have to be careful!”

“Okay, well, it was my first day as an omega and trust me I’ve learned the lesson, so there’s really no need to make a big deal out of this.”

“Stiles!” John sank his head into his hands for a few seconds while Stiles watched. The silence was awfully deafening. “Your scent is designed to lure alphas, do you know that? To go out like that, on your own, unclaimed – Stiles, you’re asking for it!”

Stiles’s jaw clenched. The batter he had poured into the pan was beginning to burn and blacken but he didn’t care. “I don’t care how I smell, I didn’t ask for anything. Nobody asks to get attacked like that.”

John ignored him and massaged the bridge of his nose. “How – just how? How did I end up with you? With a gay omega flirt of a son?”

Stiles slammed his fist down on the counter in a rare show of anger. Just because he was an omega didn’t mean he couldn’t be aggressive and right now Stiles was absolutely fuming. He had been attacked, he had almost been violated, and his own father thought him responsible. It made him see red. “I’m not gay and walking out to get churros does not make me a flirt! And even if I was a flirt – it wouldn’t matter if I smelled like crack does to an addict, I did not deserve what happened to me, and maybe if you weren’t such a hard-headed asshole, you would see that!”

John was standing right up in front of him in no time at all. He was trying to intimidate Stiles but it would have worked better if he were taller. Stiles stood his ground, which was hard as hell, given he was up against an alpha, his dad and the Sheriff all at once, but he held it. “I am your father and you do not call me names under _my_ roof, do you understand me?”

Stiles didn’t respond except to curl his lip in disgust.

John’s red eyes came out and before Stiles could react he had grabbed the frying pan by the handle and pressed the side of it against Stiles’s exposed inner arm.

Stiles howled in pain, yanking his arm away from the frying pan and hurrying reflexively over to the sink, flooding the burn with cold water and holding back tears as best as he could. Behind him John set the pan down, turned off the heat and quite calmly settled back to his previous seat.

“Now you know what to expect when you defy an alpha.” He eyed Stiles, who was still standing over the sink running cold water on his throbbing skin and wincing at regular intervals. “This is the world we live in, son, and if I have to do this to get you to see that, I will.”

 

 

Stiles did the only thing he really could do and called Scott.

Scott heard the emergency in his voice even if Stiles didn’t specify what it was, and Stiles heard the smallest note of doubt in Scott’s. Scott probably still thought he was avoiding him. Stiles sighed mentally. He would have a lot to tell him, but this was his best friend, and this was what best friends were for, right?

Stiles packed a bag.

Scott, predictably, hit the roof. He was quiet throughout all of Stiles’s story, with only a pensive look on his face as he asked the occasional clarifying question. When Stiles got to the alpha attack by the bus stop, Scott’s eyebrows flew up.

“Stiles, why didn’t you tell me?”

Stiles heard the hurt in his friend’s voice and hurried to reassure Scott. “It’s not because I didn’t trust you, man, not at all, you know that. It was just the alpha scent. It’s not your fault. I just needed a little space, ’cuz it just brought all these memories back and stuff. I – I should’ve explained, and I’m sorry, but for a while there it was tough being around you.”

Scott accepted his apology and pulled him in for a bone-crushing hug. Unlike Derek, Scott was very much a hugger, a fact his girlfriend attested to. The smell still didn’t sit entirely well with Stiles but it was bearable and it was Scott, not a whole high school, so he didn’t feel too out of place. Considering how some trauma victims suffered, he thought, recalling his research on omegas yesterday, which had included several first-hand accounts, he didn’t have it that bad.

But when Stiles showed Scott the burn mark – because he wasn’t going to keep this from Scott, Scott would find out sooner or later and would only be hurt if it was later – and explained it to him, Scott blew a gasket.

“You’re moving in with us. Now.”

The skin was angry and red and beginning to swell, and Stiles knew it was only going to get worse when it blistered. “Scott, I appreciate it a lot, but you don’t have a spare room.”

“I don’t care,” Scott fumed, “We have an air mattress and a couch. You’re seventeen, you’re legally responsible, you can leave home with or without your dad’s permission.”

“Permission isn’t the problem,” Stiles said softly, “Scott, your mom can’t afford another mouth to feed and I can’t pay rent without any money. It’s okay. I’ll just – not call him an asshole again. I stay out his way and he’ll leave me alone. It’ll be fine.”

Scott growled, still unhappy. “When you graduate, me and you are moving out of this town and you won’t ever have to see your dad again.”

Stiles gave an allowing tilt of his head and tried to distract his friend. “Now are you gonna help me bandage this, or what?”

He crashed at Scott’s for the night and went with him to school. Stiles made sure to wear a long-sleeved hoodie such that nobody would see his bandage. With all the attention he’d been getting people were sure to notice and he just wanted to keep it quiet for now.

He opened his locker ten minutes before class, only for six balloons to pop out and hit him again. How had they even fit in there? He took in the sight of his locker, stocked to the brim with presents and one crudely drawn note involving him on hands and knees, and sighed irritably. Stiles dragged all the stuff out of his locker, piled it neatly on the floor, and locked it again. He hoped he was getting the message across.

Stiles’s prankster, however, eyed the balloons thoughtfully. He took hold of the strings and his bag and marched off in the direction of the gym. People in the corridor parted for him – not smoothly and dramatically like he was Moses or something, but they definitely stepped out of his way. He had sprayed liberally with deodorant so he didn’t smell like alpha catnip but people still ogled him as he hurried through clutching his balloons.

When he got to the gym there were guys running around playing sports but Stiles didn’t pay enough attention to notice which one. He knew that the sports team was a bit of an alpha nest – sports tended to attract the competitive, posturing types – but he ignored all the players as he released his balloons with a dumb smile on his face.

He watched as the balloons floated upwards and as they eventually hit the ceiling. They were way too far up for anyone to reach them, and they wouldn’t come down until they were deflated by a ceiling fan, in which case they would start dropping on random people, or somebody threw a small sharp projectile accurately enough to hit them. His grin stayed plastered on his face as he heard a sports whistle blast repeatedly.

“Bilinski! What in the _hell_ are you doing?”

Stiles turned his lazy smile to the Coach, who was gesturing irritably at the balloons. “When those deflate they’re just gonna fall on random players, Bilinski, and these kids are distracted enough as it is –”

“Then tell ’em to stop giving me presents,” Stiles suggested innocently, before he lowered his voice and leaned in. “Coach, every present I get, I’m gonna put in the gym or the locker rooms and I’m gonna leave omega smell all over it. You think balloons are a distraction, you should try see what omega scent does to an alpha. So. If nobody leaves me presents, nobody distracts the players.” He turned and walked away, enjoying the sound of Coach being speechless for once.

Hopefully Coach would sort of spread the word that Stiles wanted no more gifts and that would be the end. He strolled along the corridor and made his way to his first class, satisfied, ignoring the stares he got as he rounded the corner into biology. He didn’t have chemistry today so he wasn’t sure if he was going to see Derek, and the thought saddened him. He liked Derek and he wanted another hit of Derek’s scent.

Jesus Christ, he could _not_ start thinking of Derek like he was some kind of drug. Freaking hell. Derek was a person and Stiles enjoyed his company, was grateful for everything Derek was doing for him, but most of all how being around him made him feel calm, made him _safe_ , when he was constantly on his toes around other alphas nowadays.

He had second period with Jackson and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Fortunately Scott was also in his math class and sat on his outside so Jackson couldn’t slip any unpleasant comments past him.

At one point Stiles forgot about the burn on his arm – he had actually been concentrating on math, which was new – and when he dropped his arm onto the table it caught he accidentally hissed out loud. Heads whipped around and he refrained from rubbing it until they had turned back around again. Jackson kept staring, but the pain was overwhelming so he allowed himself to rub it gently through his shirt as Scott stared on worriedly. He had no doubt that he stank of pain and he tried to rein it in as best he could.

His arm continued to throb for the rest of the day. During lunch he made to take his old spot with Scott and Allison and Jackson and Lydia but Jackson kept shooting him these knowing looks that made him uncomfortable, so he sat down with Derek instead. Scott saw and made to get up and join him, but Jackson said something, and Scott sat back down.

Derek raised an eyebrow at Stiles. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Stiles reassured him, “Yeah, just Jackson keeps staring at me weird. Like he knows something I don’t. I don’t know, he’s a weird guy.”

Derek smirked and ate his chicken. “I saw your balloon prank this morning.”

Stiles grinned. “Have any of them come down yet?”

“No,” Derek bit off a piece of chicken, “But don’t worry. Coach is telling every sports team that anybody who gives you presents fails Econs so I’m guessing your diabolical plan is working.”

Stiles sat back happily. “Good. I don’t know how all those balloons fit in my locker but there’s even more stuff in there than before.”

“Oh?” Derek’s tone was neutral – mostly. Stiles heard something else, but he wasn’t sure what it is. He told himself he was reading too much into things.

“More flowers. They’re really pretty but my locker is going to smell like them for ever.”

“That might not be a bad thing,” Derek pointed out. “Better flowers than omega, maybe.”

Stiles shrugged, digging into his lasagne. “Either way, I think I am sending a clear message. I’m buying a padlock for that thing and that will be the end of that.”

When they had finished eating Stiles made to go to his locker to get his books for fifth period and Derek accompanied him. He didn’t really need to but he kind of wanted an excuse to hug Derek. Once he arrived at his locker, however, Derek glanced around the deserted corridor and put his hand into his pocket.

“I have something for you,” he murmured, careful not to be heard.

Stiles heart sank. “It – it’s not a weird alpha present thing, is it?” He knew the rest of the school was listening to its baser instincts but he really didn’t need Derek to join that list. Derek was the only sane alpha he had besides Scott.

Derek snorted. “No. I mean, yeah, it’s a present, but it’s not ’cause I’m hitting on you.” He pulled a small plastic bag with some pills in it out his pocket.

Stiles’s eyes went wide and he backed away a little, panic colouring his scent. “Man, seriously, I don’t – I can’t – my dad – I’m not doing drugs, Derek –”

Derek laughed, an honest, musical sound. “It’s not ecstasy, Stiles, they’re scent suppressants.” He lowered his voice at the end.

Relief flooded Stiles. “Oh. Oh good. I don’t know why I thought it would be something else.”

Derek laughed again. “’Cause I got a bad reputation?”

Stiles ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I didn’t say that. But seriously, I can’t keep these at home. Thank you so much, though.”

Derek shook his head. “You don’t need to. All you need to do is take one a day. I’ll keep them with me, and I’ll find you in the mornings.”

Stiles eyed them nervously. “How well will they work?”

Derek furrowed his eyebrows. “In close quarters, and I mean _really_ up close and personal, they’ll be able to tell you’re an omega. But you won’t give off that strong scent 24/7, you’ll just smell neutral and kind of like a beta. Use these and a little deodorant and you’ll just smell kind of normal. And by normal I mean you won’t attract any attention.”

Stiles gaped. “It’s that easy?”

Derek flashed him a grin that was all teeth before it quickly was retracted from his face. It was a shame. Derek looked good when he was smiling. “You want to try?”

Stiles nodded before a thought occurred to him. “Wait. Where do you even get these? And how much are you paying for them? I can’t afford illegal drugs. I can barely even afford my legal drugs.” Derek quirked an eyebrow at that. “Adderall, Derek, not opiates.”

Derek waved a hand. “Stiles, don’t worry about it, okay. If every alpha in the school is being a dick you to, the least one of them can do is try help you out.” Stiles raised an eyebrow but didn’t press the issue as Derek fished a tablet out of the bag. “Do you have any water?”

Stiles took the pill and swallowed it dry, causing Derek’s eyebrows to shoot up a little. “How long do they take to work?”

“A few hours,” Derek shrugged, recovering from his apparent shock, “But if you take one every day you’ll be covered all the time.”

Stiles smiled at him. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for him since becoming an omega and this would make his life _so_ much easier. “Thanks, Derek. I mean it, thank you.”

Derek did that thing again where he began to smile and wiped it off his face. “It’s no problem.”

“Can I hug you?”

Derek seemed surprised, but pleasantly so, and he hugged the omega happily. Stiles drank in the scent of _home_ and _good_ and _safe_ and sighed contentedly. Thank God for Derek Hale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you were wondering, this is where the out of character Sheriff Stilinski tag is relevant. There will be more development on it but, mild spoiler alert, nasty Sheriff does not get any nastier than this.
> 
> I'm so sorry Stiles.


	10. I Call That Progress

Derek was right about the scent suppressants.

Stiles was only on day four but already his life had improved. There had been no more gifts in his locker, a lot less rude comments in the corridor, and he had actually ventured out of his house alone and made it home without incident. His dad seemed less confrontational – on the few occasions Stiles saw him, anyway – and nobody but Scott ever got close enough to get a whiff of omega.

Well. Except Derek, during his daily hugs.

Two weeks ago Stiles would have said it was depressing as hell that nobody ever got close enough to him to even tell what gender he was, and complained to Scott about how he was getting zero action, but he found he didn’t really mind. Being an omega complicated things but Stiles found he got his dose of physical human contact during his hugs with Derek.

Which was why after nearly a week, Stiles feeling worlds better and no longer uncomfortable around alphas, he still hadn’t cancelled his subscription to Derek Daily. He didn’t want to. He liked hugging Derek and it felt like Derek liked hugging him and he wasn’t about to make it awkward. Derek Hale was his friend and seemed honestly happier when he was with Stiles than normally.

Although, that wasn’t hard, seeing as Derek was kind of broody.

Stiles was at home alone and he was bored out of his mind. Scott was hanging out with Allison, his dad was conveniently working his third double shift that week, and he decided to ask Derek if he wanted to hang out.

Nothing weird. Just hang out. Like friends do.

He sent a text off asking if Derek wanted to study chemistry with him. No sane teenager thought that studying actually meant studying when it was done with friends. Stiles liked the idea of group studying and when it came to exams it was sometimes helpful, but his and Scott’s and their friends’ group study sessions usually ended with Far Cry 3 or a food-fight.

He received a reply ten minutes later.

_Yeah sure. Do you want to come over here? My sister baked brownies and she’s really good at baking._

Now _that_ sounded like an invitation Stiles wasn’t missing out on. Who didn’t love brownies? Or food that hadn’t gone from a plastic wrapper straight to the microwave, if Stiles was honest with himself.

He sent a reply and decided he should probably bring his chemistry stuff just in case. Because while he might be aware of the conditions surrounding group ‘studying’, it would be weird to turn up with no books at all.

Stiles slung his bag into the Jeep and put the car in gear. If someone had told him two weeks ago he would be an omega, on illegal drugs and hanging out with Derek Hale, he would probably have punched them. Life was funny sometimes.

He rolled up to the Hale house and could smell the brownies before he stepped out of the car. His mouth watered. They smelled heavenly. God bless Derek’s sister.

He rang the doorbell of this huge mansion-ass house and took a polite step back. He could smell Derek, a female beta who must be his sister, and another male alpha. He frowned. Did Derek have a brother?

The door swung open and a man Stiles didn’t recognize stood in the doorway. He was in his late twenties, maybe, an alpha, with piercing eyes and stubble. His hair was mussed and his clothes were wrinkled. He quirked an eyebrow at Stiles. “And who are you?”

Stiles half-smiled. He wasn’t going to be intimidated. If anything, presenting omega had made him more determined to not let alphas push him around. “I’m Stiles, I’m a friend of Derek’s. Is he here?”

“Stiles!” Derek grinned from the top of a staircase and descended. He took the stairs elegantly, like a waterfall. If Stiles tried to go down stairs that fast he would probably fall over. Derek opened the door wider and invited Stiles in. “Stiles, this is my uncle Peter. He’s moody all the time and probably drunk so don’t listen to anything he says.”

“It’s genetic then.” Stiles teased, earning him a light punch on the shoulder.

Peter cracked a smile and Derek’s sister came bounding into the room. She was beautiful, with dark hair like him and bright brown eyes, and a genuine smile. She smelled as happy to see Stiles as she looked and it warmed him to her. “Hi! You must be Stiles! I’m Laura.”

They shook hands and made small talk about Stiles’s dad and the weather. Eventually, Laura brought out a plate of brownies for them to take with them upstairs and Stiles found himself being shown around Derek’s room, which, wow, was a lot less messy than his room had been last time Derek came to his place.

“Your room is so tidy,” Stiles announced pensively.

Derek laughed. “Yeah, I can’t find any of my stuff if it’s messy.”

Stiles was offered a brownie and he took one, finding it to be just as delicious as he had smelled outside. “Your sister is a goddess.”

“Don’t tell her that. It’ll go straight to her head.”

“She deserves it.” Stiles insisted. “Jesus. Wow. I think my brain actually stopped functioning.”

Derek quirked both eyebrows. Stiles was learning rapidly that a great deal of Derek’s communication with other people depended on his eyebrows. “It functioned to begin with?”

Stiles stuck his tongue out at him. “Rude.”

Derek took a bite out of his own brownie. “So how’re things with your dad?” He wasn’t quite casual, but Stiles could hear he’d been trying to keep his tone light.

He followed suit. “Oh, you know. I don’t see him a lot and it works that way.”

“That’s…that’s rough. He still doesn’t accept your presentation?”

Stiles thought back to last weekend with the frying pan and his burn, which was gross and blistery and very very painful, tingled faintly. “No. No he doesn’t. At all, really.”

Derek grimaced in sympathy. “Wow. That bad?”

“I think he was trying to brace himself for worst-case scenario being a beta, but then it turned out even worse. I don’t care what he thinks. He’s a dick.”

Stiles was surprised at the venom in his voice and clearly Derek was too. “I’m sure he’ll get over it. He is your dad, after all.”

Stiles screwed up his face in thought and swallowed back his anger. “I don’t care. I don’t have to talk to him and I won’t. He found out about Thursday night and he said it was my fault and I was asking for it. Something happened to him when mom died, Derek, I don’t know what, but something did.”

Derek stayed quiet, out of respect or because he didn’t know what to say, Stiles didn’t know.

“You’re sweating,” Derek said suddenly, and Stiles realized that yes, he was in fact boiling hot. He hadn’t noticed because he’d been so immersed in his own rage. “We don’t have the heat on. I can open the window, but we gotta watch out for bugs. Why don’t you take your sweater off?”

A sliver of panic shot through Stiles at the thought of removing his sweater and revealing his bandaged arm, but he quelled it and refused to let it colour his scent. Evidently he didn’t succeed because Derek’s expression became suddenly unreadable.

“Nah, man, it’s cool.” Stiles tried to reassure him but he was fairly certain that Derek had seen right through it. He did that all the time. How?

Derek reached out a palm and felt across Stiles’s forehead. It would look suspicious to dodge away so Stiles let it stay. “I can see you’re wearing a shirt underneath. You’re sweating. Why don’t you take it off?”

Derek was asking a direct question and damn, Stiles wasn’t sure how to dodge it, but he wouldn’t be Stiles Stilinski if he didn’t try. “I’m actually a little sick. I’ll keep it on?”

“Sick, huh?” Derek stared him down, as if he knew Stiles was lying and was waiting for it to come out. And God, Stiles was just barely clamping down on the truth. He wanted to tell Derek, wanted to feel the relief as the words gushed out of his mouth, but Derek would get angry and shit would go down. Derek took a long, deep breath through his nose. “I honestly don’t smell any sickness.”

“Must be the suppressants.” Stiles supplied, way too quickly. He could feel his own heart beating too fast, there was no way Derek wasn’t hearing it.

“No,” Derek said slowly, “No, I don’t think that’s it. Because I actually smell something else.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows as though it were a surprise. “Oh? What’s that?”

“Rubbing alcohol.” Derek stared at him with that heavy look again and Stiles tried not to shrink. “I don’t have any rubbing alcohol. What have you been using it for, Stiles?”

Damn. He thought a disinfecting bandage would be good for the burn. Of course someone would smell it eventually. He should’ve realized. He counted his lucky stars that nobody had noticed at school, but then there were so many scents around that it could easily be passed off as something else. “Oh, you know. Minor injury. I caught my arm on a door.”

“Can I see it?”

“There’s really no need. Why?”

“Because I don’t believe you.” Derek’s statement came out matter-of-fact. “Because I know you’re a good liar and I’m worried about you.”

“I told you,” Stiles insisted, “I caught my arm on a door. I’m a klutz.” Every good lie contained a grain of truth.

Derek exhaled a weary breath. “Stiles, honestly. I just want to make sure you’re okay. That’s all I want. I won’t – I won’t freak out.”

“Do you promise?”

Derek’s expression grew concerned and Stiles felt the smell of it envelope him. Eventually, after a few beats, Derek murmured, “I promise.”

Stiles took his sweater off, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, and showed Derek the plasticky stick-on bandage he’d gotten from Scott, who’d probably got it from his mother.

The bandage was cold and clinically white against Stiles’s milky skin. Derek took it in, saw the blood that had seeped through, and he knew it was more than a scratch from a door. “You need a new one,” he said quietly, “I’ll help you clean it up.”

He left to grab some medical supplies and Stiles sighed to himself. When hanging out with Scott it was all fun and banter, but with Derek it was always so serious. They invariably ended up being deep and stuff together. Stiles appreciated Derek more than he could say but he wished their friendship was less of a one-way street. He felt like Derek was constantly helping him and fixing him up but they never actually talked about Derek. It was always Stiles, and omega stuff, and that kind of thing. He made a mental note of that and squirreled it away in his mind. _Ask more about Derek._

Derek returned with a plastic bucket full of all the home medical supplies Stiles could dream of – apparently Laura was a medic of some kind – and set about removing the bandage.

“Okay, I’m just gonna rip this off,” he muttered. “In three…”

Derek didn’t countdown from three to one, he just tore it straight off after three. Stiles winced but it wasn’t exactly painful compared to the throbbing he felt in his arm. Derek stared at his wound, shifted uncomfortably, and eventually met Stiles’s gaze. Stiles was temporarily disarmed by how Derek’s eyes appeared almost completely clear in the light. “That’s gotta hurt, but you don’t smell like pain.”

“I control it,” Stiles admitted. “The scents, my feelings. I was always good at hiding my feelings. Nobody smells emotions on me unless I want them to.”

Derek rested a hand on Stiles’s shoulder. His eyes were full of something Stiles couldn’t describe. “Stiles,” he said softly. “Let me. Show me how much it hurts. It will feel good to let it out.”

Derek was right, bottling up his feelings and refusing to release them to the world was extremely unpleasant, but that didn’t mean Stiles was about to let everyone see his suffering. His eyes met Derek’s and he found himself moved by the pureness of his feelings. Derek looked worried, like he honestly just wanted to help, and he smelled that way too. Most people looked one way and smelled another, but not Derek. Derek – he cared, Stiles realized, he really cared about what happened to him. He gulped, let out a deep breath, and released his pain, let that barrier he had put up go crashing down.

It must have hit Derek pretty hard because Stiles saw him sway a little where he sat. “Whoa. _Wow._ That is one nasty burn. Jesus, Stiles, you should’ve _said something,_ I can help.”

His hand closed around the wrist just below Stiles’s injury and Stiles felt the pain drain away from him. He watched as Derek shuddered and when Derek gritted his teeth Stiles pulled his arm away. It felt better, but his arm still throbbed and it looked violently repulsive.

Derek glanced up and stared at Stiles, hurt clear in his eyes and his scent. “Stiles? I told you, I can help.”

Stiles shook his head. “That’s enough. It’s okay.” He threaded his fingers together nervously.

Derek wouldn’t let it go. “You’re still in pain.”

“You can’t take all this pain, Derek!”

Derek’s eyebrows knitted together and worry for Stiles grew until it was stifling. “If you can handle it, so can I.”

Stiles shook his head rapidly, like a tic, and Derek felt his panic surrounding him. “No. No, that’s not how it works. Because this happened to me, not you, I’m the one with the burn, not you, so I’m the one in pain, not you, because this didn’t happen to you and you don’t deserve it –”

“Hey!” Derek grabbed his jaw and forced Stiles to look him in the eye. “You don’t deserve that. You deserve that less than any other person I know. So shut up and let me take the pain.” He took Stiles’s hand again.

Stiles clutched his hand to his chest and scrambled away, backing into the wall until he couldn’t get any further. He drew his knees up to his chest and held his head in his hands. His chest felt like it was squeezing, like he was being constricted by his own ribs. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t focus, and the world was starting to grow blurry. “No, no, this can’t happen, this _thing_ , nobody can know, nobody will believe me, nobody will _care_ , nobody would believe me over him, I need to keep it covered, I need to – I need to –”

He was panting, short of breath as panic washed over him and drowned out anything else. He barely even felt his throbbing arm. He wanted to cry and vomit and scream but he couldn’t, couldn’t do any of those things, his throat was cracked and his eyes were dry and all he could feel was _fear_ –

“Stiles!” Derek’s voice was gentle but insistent and it cut through the haze that had pervaded Stiles’s senses. “Stiles, listen to me, focus on my voice, can you do that?”

Stiles couldn’t do anything. He just sat there, shaking and feeling every emotion he never wanted to feel, all at once.

“Stiles, I need you to talk to me. Look at me. Focus on me. It’s important. You’re having a panic attack.”

_Panic attack._ Stiles knew what that meant. Focus. Focus on something that wasn’t his feelings. His eyes roamed the room before settling on Derek, kneeling in front of him. “Focus.”

Derek squeezed his knees but Stiles barely registered it. “Good. That’s good, Stiles. Listen to me. You need to breathe slowly.”

Stiles nodded mutely. He knew how panic attacks worked. He needed to slow his breathing and calm himself down. He could do this. He had done this before, scared and alone. Here he was safe. He kept telling himself that. _Safe._

And as Stiles grew more lucid, he became more aware of Derek’s scent. _Safe,_ it said, _safe, home, good,_ and Stiles focused on that. It calmed him down in record time and he let out a deep exhale.

When it was over he looked up at Derek and melted into Derek’s gaze. “That was the fastest panic attack I’ve ever had.”

Derek let out a breath of air in a stressed laugh. “Stiles, it lasted forty minutes.”

Stiles ran a hand through his hair. “We can’t keep doing this.”

Derek’s scent grew despondent immediately, even if his expression betrayed nothing. “Doing what? You – you don’t want to hang out?”

Stiles gave a tired smile at the sadness he could smell. So. Derek liked hanging out with him too. “That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is whenever we hang out it’s always about _me._ Me, or being an omega, or whatever stupid shit I’ve gotten into. It’s never you. I mean, you have to have problems too, right? We should talk about them.”

Derek’s eyebrows lifted in relief. “I don’t think my problems are as big as yours.”

Stiles’s eyes went skyward. “Okay, so I have a dad who came at me with a frying pan, but seriously. Something has to be bugging you, right? How come you always eat lunch on your own?”

Derek’s eyes turned huge. “Wait, your _dad_ did that to you? With a frying pan?”

Stiles realized his mistake. “You said you wouldn’t freak out.”

Derek had to literally stuff his own fist as far into his mouth as he could to stop the muscle in his jaw from jumping. When he removed it he looked calmer, but there was still a tinge of red to his irises and Stiles could smell anger. “Not freaking out. But what the _hell_? Your dad’s the Sheriff!”

“Which is why we’re not telling anyone.” Stiles eyed him tersely, “Nobody would believe me and it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Derek gestured speechlessly, eyebrows raised to the sky and eyes as big as dinner plates. “Stiles, what if he does it again?”

“He won’t,” Stiles said firmly, “He did it because I called him an asshole. I won’t call him an asshole again. It’ll be fine.”

“Fine? _Fine?_ Which part of this is _fine_?” Derek jumped up to his feet and ran a hand through his hair, agitated. He paced the room like a caged lion. Or a caged wolf. “He burned you with a frying pan – that is gonna take _weeks_ to heal, okay, and you’re gonna have a scar – and you had a panic attack over it – where is this _fine?_ ”

Stiles got to his feet and stood his ground. He might not be naturally blessed with a talent for confrontations – actually he liked to run away from confrontations as much as possible – but he was _sick_ of feeling like he had to do things a certain way, just because he was an omega. No. If he wanted to argue with an alpha, he would argue with an alpha, whether it was generally acceptable behaviour or not. “I had a panic attack because I _suck_ at letting people in and you taking pain from me was too close to that. When I’ve finished high school and gone to college I can cut all ties with my dad, but I can’t really rebel right now, Derek!”

Derek softened. “You had a panic attack because of _me_?”

Stiles refused to meet his gaze. “No. It’s not your fault.”

“Stiles – would you really rather suffer all this pain than let someone else feel it?”

Derek’s voice was gentle, and Stiles knew the truth. Yes. He would rather take the pain himself than watch Derek do it. Because it hadn’t happened to Derek, because Derek wasn’t a mouthy omega, and because Derek might be broody as hell but he was the nicest person Stiles knew and he shouldn’t be putting up with some high school omega bullshit. “I – I can’t do that to you. You’ve done so much for me already, you don’t deserve –”

In an instant Derek was right in front of him – alpha speed, _again_ – and held Stiles’s wrists. It wasn’t aggressive, Stiles wasn’t pinned, he wasn’t uncomfortable, more as though Derek wanted to make himself very clear. Derek’s eyes held his and Stiles found himself unable to look away. There was such earnest in those eyes, such honesty. Stiles took a deep breath and felt Derek’s scent calm his frazzled nerves. “I do it because you don’t deserve to.”

Stiles opened his mouth to protest but was silenced by his own relief as the pain drained away from him. Derek closed his eyes and his breathing turned ever so slightly laboured but he wouldn’t stop until he couldn’t take any more. The vicious throbbing in Stiles’s arm had faded to a low hum in the background, and Stiles’s whole body sagged in relief. If Derek was going to insist on taking his pain he didn’t see a point in saying no.

Derek stumbled, and Stiles grabbed his arm and looped it over his shoulder. He helped Derek, who was panting like he’d been winded, over to his bed to rest. Derek kept a grip on his shoulder, though, so when he flopped down onto the bed Stiles fell down with him. He pushed himself up to a more comfortable sitting position and kept a hand on Derek’s shoulder, the alpha’s head half in his lap. It comforted both of them, he should know that by now. Stiles felt better when he was touching Derek and he could smell how Derek felt the same.

“Why do we always end up like this?” Stiles murmured absently.

Derek’s chest was still rising and falling heavily and his eyes were a little unfocused but he seemed rational enough. “Like what?”

Stiles sighed and stared down at Derek. What were they even? Friends? It felt like Stiles depended on Derek for his life. “You, fixing my crappy life problems and getting shit for it.”

Derek let out a slightly exasperated laugh. “If I can fix your problems, then I will.”

“What about your problems?”

Derek frowned. “What about my problems?”

“We never talk about them.” There was something wistful in Stiles’s tone. He had bared himself to Derek, was totally exposed, but he still knew almost nothing about the alpha. “If you can fix all of my problems I want to fix some of yours.”

Derek huffed a laugh. “Stiles, you can’t.”

Stiles smiled. “See, now we’ve established you have problems. I call that progress. Now you gotta tell me what they are.”

Derek laughed, a full-bodied, semi-sarcastic laugh. The colour was beginning to return to his face. “I intimidate people unnecessarily and I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

“See!” Stiles grinned. “This I can work with.”

They snorted with laughter and Derek adjusted his head so he lay on the soft part of Stiles’s leg.


	11. Whose Stupid Idea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand another one! The new chapters will keep on coming roughly every day for the next week or so.

It was school, it was a Friday, and so far the highlight of Derek’s day was that the apple he had eaten this morning had been tasty.

Possibly because he hadn’t seen Stiles yet.

Derek hadn’t been able to find him this morning and he was usually pretty good at that. The suppressants had to be taken on the regular or else they’d stop working. He figured that he should give Stiles two tablets for the weekend, or arrange to meet him. It would be a disaster if Stiles thought his scent was covered and it actually was not.

His mood lightened when Stiles set his food down opposite him in the cafeteria with a grin. “Hey. Where were you this morning?”

“Oh! Sorry. Coach made me help him pick up the balloons that fell down in the gym.”

Derek snorted. “Did anyone get hit by them?”

Stiles sighed. “Apparently Greenberg did, but whether that’s true or Coach’s imagination is hard to tell.”

Derek’s eyebrows furrowed a little in the middle. “You do need to take the suppressant now, though. It’s a small window.”

“Right! Yeah, sure, do you wanna just pass it over?”

Derek jerked his chin in Jackson’s direction. It was a discreet gesture that was meant to say, _look over there, but don’t be obvious._ Stiles, being Stiles, didn’t really fathom the term ‘subtle’ and turned his whole body around to look at Jackson. Jackson was staring hard at them, eyes trained on Derek’s hand in his pocket. “He can’t hear us from over there. Not over the noise.”

“I am not getting busted by Jackson.” Stiles whipped back around and picked nervously at his food. “It’s okay. We’ll eat and then go to the lockers or something.”

Derek nodded and ate his potatoes, ignoring how Jackson’s stare was basically burning a hole in Stiles’s shirt. Jackson was objectively attractive but he was creepy, could nobody else see that?

“How’s your arm?”

“Disgusting,” Stiles responded, and a little puff of sincerity escaped his finely honed control. “It’s taking a long time to heal. It’s not infected but it’s still pretty gross.”

“You’d smell it if it was infected,” Derek offered, spearing a broccoli. “Omega senses are really good. You’d probably smell it the second it ever got infected.”

“Yeah, omega senses are actually better than alpha ones,” Stiles grinned. “I mean we got lucky in one department. I can smell every damn feeling in this school, it’s kinda cool.”

Derek quirked an eyebrow and a small smile played on his lips. “Okay. If your sense of smell is so good, tell me something I don’t know about someone in this room.”

Stiles eyed him but acquiesced to the challenge. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, all through his nose. Derek’s nose would have been accurate but largely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of scents in the room, but it looked like Stiles could distinguish between them. “Do you know who Isaac Lahey is?”

“Yeah, he’s on the basketball team.”

“He’s feeling pretty good about himself. I’m actually really happy for him.”

Derek raised both eyebrows now. “If you’re going to tell me he just got laid, at least say where so I can avoid it.”

Stiles cackled. “No. It’s actually better. His dad hasn’t hit him in a whole month. Apparently he’s sobering up.”

Derek’s heart went out to poor Isaac, but the news he was doing good was of course a relief. “I had no idea his dad did that.”

“Yeah. He smells so happy, like he’s radiating it. Good for him.”

Derek shook his head. “Is there anyone else you know about who gets beaten up by their parents?”

“Actually, no.” Stiles looked at him contemplatively. “Why? Were you thinking of starting an orphanage?”

 Derek snorted with laughter. “Idiot. Come on, let’s go to the lockers.”

He followed Stiles to the junior lockers but something nagged at him. There was too much to smell and hear for him to be certain but it felt like someone was following them. The patter of footsteps was too close and too persistent to be coincidence. He didn’t want to expose them by turning around to look so instead he grabbed Stiles’s shoulder and pulled him over to the nearest bathroom.

Once inside, Stiles raised an eyebrow and gestured with his hands. He had such long, pale fingers, Derek thought absently. “Dude, what?”

“Somebody’s following us.” Derek gritted his teeth as he heard feet approaching the door. “Here. Get in.” He pushed Stiles into a stall, followed him inside and whipped the door closed.

Bathroom stalls were not really designed for two people, Derek reflected, and he was a fairly large person, so it wasn’t really a surprise that it was a tight fit. Stiles closed the lid of the toilet and sat on it so he wasn’t pushed up flush against Derek. Derek’s alpha grimaced but thoughts of Stiles’s body heat were banished as he heard the bathroom door open.

Whoever it was waltzed in. Stiles gave an experimental sniff of the air and mouthed ‘JACKSON’ at Derek. Derek rolled his eyes. Why had they decided to hide from Jackson? That looked way more suspicious than Jackson walking in to find them actually using the bathroom. Whose stupid idea was this?

His. His stupid idea.

Jackson’s voice rang loud and clear through the silence. “Really, Stilinski? You’re shacked up in a bathroom stall with another dude? Really?”

Stiles’s eyes were wide but he wisely decided not to answer.

“I can smell it’s you, y’know. We have a ton of classes together, don’t think I wouldn’t recognize that scent. But the other guy…who is that?”

They heard Jackson smell the air and sigh. “See, I know you’re no expert on the topic, but having sex in a bathroom stall is really lame.”

Derek wanted to point out that if they were having sex there would be a lot more noise and a lot more smell but at the moment Jackson didn’t know it was him so he decided to keep his mouth shut. Stiles appeared to be thinking along the same lines but Derek could see why he didn’t deny it. If Stiles wasn’t having sex then what the hell was he doing with someone else in a bathroom stall? A drug deal was the next logical conclusion, and Stiles couldn’t get busted with the suppressants. His dad would be livid and might actually lose his job.

“Duly noted,” Stiles said drily, and there was a mocking undercurrent to his tone. “I’ll make sure to remember that for next time.”

Jackson paced, stopping just outside the stall door. “I know that scent. That’s Derek Hale.”

Derek winced. Launching himself at Jackson last week when he had threated Stiles was having repercussions, one of them being that Jackson was familiar with his scent. This dumb idea had gone far enough. He had yanked the door open and was ready to give Jackson a fist to the jaw when the bathroom door whirled shut as Jackson dodged outside.

Stiles groaned, got up off the toilet, and threw his hands dramatically down on one of the sinks. “He’s gonna tell the whole school that we’re having sex. You know that, right?”

Derek scowled. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into the stall. I just wanted to get you away from him.”

Stiles gave a small smile. “It’s okay. It’s _your_ reputation that’s ruined, though.”

“My reputation?”

Stiles snorted with laughter. “Jackson is going to tell everyone that you were just hooking up with the school’s biggest freak. I am so glad I don’t care what people think. Otherwise it would totally be embarrassing.”

“I’m not embarrassed to be seen with you.”

“Derek, when it comes to gossip and its power to ruin your life, being seen with me and having sex with me are two very different things.”

And when Stiles phrased it so candidly Derek couldn’t quite remove the image from his mind. How it would feel, how Stiles would feel –

He managed to stop himself before his imagination and his alpha got any more out of hand. Jesus, what was wrong with him? He needed to get a grip.

“I don’t care,” he growled, voice significantly huskier than he would have liked. “I don’t care what they say.”

 

 

“I hear someone at the high school presented omega.” Laura said conversationally.

Derek, Peter and Laura had sat down for a meal together to celebrate Laura’s getting the night off. She didn’t get a lot of time off lately so Derek and Peter had attempted to cook. Peter was a good cook when he wanted to be but he rarely ever wanted to do anything that didn’t involve a bottle so it was mostly Derek just on his own. He had consulted the internet and followed a recipe for roast beef and was actually quite surprised at how well it turned out.

“Really?” Peter looked up with a glint of interest in his eyes. “That’s unusual. Do you know the kid, Derek?”

“He’s, uh,” Derek cleared his throat, “He’s in my chemistry class.” He didn’t generally lie to his family but he didn’t want to admit to them that Stiles was on suppressants. They’d met Stiles and not smelled any omega on him. He wanted to keep the concept of the omega teenager entirely separate from the concept of his friend Stiles. The more people thought Stiles was a beta, the better.

“Does he smell good?” Peter prompted. “You know omegas are supposed to smell really good to alphas.”

“He wears a lot of deodorant,” Derek shrugged as though he wasn’t extremely familiar with Stiles’s delicious scent. “He gets crap from some of the alphas, though.”

“Poor kid’s bound to,” Laura murmured sympathetically, ladling more gravy over her vegetables. “But I imagine the female alphas aren’t as bad as the male ones. There was an omega a year below me and she got so many come-ons from the guys. It was unbelievable.”

“Oh, he gets shit from the guys.” Derek said, remembering the incident with Jackson last week. And the stupid incident with Jackson today. He was still kicking himself over that one.

Peter snorted. “Okay, so not only is this kid an omega, he’s a bisexual omega? Wow. The world is a cruel place.”

Derek wholeheartedly agreed with Peter but he wanted to keep quiet on the topic of Stiles and omegas before his dumb brain gave anything important away.

“Somebody should get him some suppressants.” Laura supplied. Something clicked in Peter’s eyes and he immediately stared over at Derek. Derek refused to meet his gaze and kept his eyes glued to his food. The beef was slightly on the rare side, he told himself. Even for wolves.

“I don’t think most teenagers know where to get drugs like that.” Peter said lightly. Mockingly. Derek felt he was being tested but was determined not to rise to it. He couldn’t give Stiles away.

Laura snickered. “I’m pretty sure they do. If you knew the number of kids we get in saying they’ve only taken a suppressant and not something else, you’d think they know where to get drugs.”

“Is there like a sentence for getting caught with scent suppressants?” Derek feigned mild interest.

Laura shrugged one shoulder. “Depends. Sometimes they let them off with a warning. Sometimes it’s six months. The maximum jail time for regular suppressants is two years, I think.”

Derek pretended his blood wasn’t running cold at the thought of Stiles in prison for two whole years. If Peter did figure it out he had to make sure to keep this under wraps. It hadn’t even been a week and the suppressants were making Stiles’s life so much better.

Peter frowned, and Derek realized that he, too, was faking curiosity. “Regular suppressants? What are the other ones?”

“Oh, they come in all kinds,” Laura responded brightly. She liked being able to use her knowledge outside of work. “With bromine, to kill the libido, for ruts and heats. With specific pheromones, to change the body’s smell to another gender. You can make yourself smell like an alpha even if you aren’t one. You can see how that might be practical occasionally.”

Derek nodded and tried to remove from his head the image of Stiles looking helpless and hurt, pale-skinned and fragile in a pair of orange prison overalls. Derek knew Stiles was wilful, and strong, too, but he wouldn’t fare well in jail. God, this scheme of theirs had to work. It had to. If Derek got Stiles put behind bars he’d never forgive himself, and Stiles would probably never forgive him either, and Derek wasn’t sure which prospect hurt more.


	12. Careers Counseling

When Stiles called the next day and wanted to meet up, Derek was quick to advertise his house as out of commission. He didn’t want Peter to get close to Stiles and realize that his smell was actually way too neutral for someone just presented. He didn’t want Peter close to Stiles at all, and his alpha approved whole-heartedly, so when Stiles suggested his own place Derek agreed easily.

He avoided Peter, stopping only to grab breakfast and get dressed, before pulling up in front of Stiles’s house and feeling a tingle of relief that the Sheriff’s car was not there. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if John was actually home. His alpha wanted to rip him to shreds but his brain told him that was maybe not too intelligent an idea.

Stiles answered the door before he even knocked – omega senses, he must have heard Derek coming – and had a gleam in his eyes that Derek had only ever seen before when Stiles was plotting something. It wasn’t a good sign, but he followed him in and sat down at the dinner table where Stiles gestured. The other boy was wearing dark jeans and a navy t-shirt, his hair mussed and his feet socked. It was weirdly nice seeing Stiles in his own environment, all relaxed and happy.

“You want anything to drink?” Stiles padded into the kitchen. “We got, uh, orange juice, milk…” He picked up the milk carton and sniffed it. He didn’t need to open it for the pungent smell of old milk to cause him to wrinkle his nose and throw it directly in the bin. “No milk. Orange juice, cherry Coke, chocolate milk…”

“Chocolate milk?” Derek was almost incredulous but it didn’t surprise him that Stiles drank chocolate milk like some kind of eight-year-old.

“What? Scott drinks it.”

Derek snorted. “Orange juice would be great.”

Stiles returned with a glass of orange juice and another glass of what Derek presumed was cherry Coke for himself and sat down next to Derek. He could feel the body heat Stiles was radiating and their knees touched but he ignored it all and tried to focus on what Stiles was saying.

Stiles pulled the laptop towards himself at an angle and grabbed a piece of A3 paper and a pen that he had been hiding somewhere. Derek quirked an eyebrow. “I thought we were doing chemistry?”

“Nope,” Stiles popped the ‘p’, “We are finding you a career path, my friend.”

Derek raised the other eyebrow. “You know the guidance office exists, right?”

“Yeah, well, the guidance office doesn’t have me.” Stiles took the pen and wrote a small title in one third of the page.

THINGS DEREK LIKES.

Derek sniggered. “Stiles, where is this going?”

Stiles underlined his title and on the other end of the page wrote THINGS DEREK DOESN’T LIKE.

“Okay, by ‘things’, I don’t just mean random stuff, you know, I mean, like, career specific stuff.” Stiles informed him.

In the middle of the page, Stiles wrote THINGS DEREK IS KIND OF OKAY WITH.

“This is looking a little Fifty Shades of Grey right now, Stiles.”

Stiles was speechless for a second. Derek was impressed. Stiles seemed to expend most of his energy on talking so for Derek to stun him out of it was an accomplishment. Or it would have been if Derek didn’t like listening to Stiles talk. Which he did. “I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that you’ve seen that movie or the fact that you bring it up over careers advice.”

Derek smirked at him. “So you’ve seen it too.”

Stiles opened his mouth only for a shallow, frustrated sound to come out. He swallowed reflexively. “Scott and I were bored, okay? Figured we’d see what all the hype was about.”

“You watched it with Scott?” Derek covered his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “That’s weird, man.”

“What? It’s a movie, it’s not actual porn…”

Derek uncovered his eyes and gave Stiles a sarcastic, are-you-serious-right-now look. Stiles threw up his hands. “Shut up about porn for a second, okay? Think about classes. Freaking hormonal alphas.” Stiles shot Derek a smug grin.

Derek rolled his eyes lightly. “Okay. Classes I don’t like. Biology?”

Stiles nodded, sticking out his lower lip in a fair-enough gesture as he scribbled biology under the title. “Okay. Math, how do you feel about math?”

A few minutes later and they had sorted all of Derek’s classes into one of the three lists. Stiles seemed way too pleased with himself but Derek wasn’t about to ruin his fun. “Okay, so anything on this list –” he gestured to THINGS DEREK DOESN’T LIKE, “Is not something that should be in any way important in your career.”

Derek looked over at the list. Biology, physics, history, social studies. His parents’ top three favourite careers for their children were medicine, engineering and law. And he didn’t see how he was going to be able to study any of those fields without some major overlap from his DOESN’T LIKE list. He wasn’t planning on burdening Stiles with his parents’ wishes but he had a nagging feeling that the omega could smell his despair.

“If you want a future in academics,” Stiles continued, in a somewhat softer tone, “It would be one of these things instead.” He indicated the THINGS DEREK LIKES list.

“What about that one?” Derek pointed at the OKAY WITH list.

Stiles scratched the back of his neck. “A job that involved those things occasionally would be fine, but you shouldn’t be making it the main focus.”

Derek stared glumly at his LIKES list. English, geography, sports. None of his parents’ wishes for him even remotely involved those things. His OKAY list contained math and chemistry, but he was really having a hard time seeing what a major in English with a minor in math would get him in life.

“Why is it so important what I like? Don’t we need to think about what’s useful?” He pointed over at his DOESN’T LIKE list. “I don’t like them but they’re good careers.”

“You can’t be stuck in a job you don’t like.” Stiles looked at him gently, as though he was worried he would hurt him. It was odd for Derek. He was a Hale, an alpha, six feet tall and a loner by choice. People were usually afraid he’d hurt _them._ “You’ll be miserable. It’s not what you want.”

“But what if it’s what someone else wants?” Derek’s breath hitched in his throat. He had never felt so vulnerable and it was jarring. He hunched his shoulders inwards and kept his eyes fixed on the table. Derek felt small and defenceless and his alpha was quashed, wriggling in disapproval. He was comforted by Stiles’s presence but these were things he’d never told anyone. He’d never once admitted his fears of disappointing his parents, not ever, and it looked like he was going to tell Stiles. But he knew deep down – if he was going to tell anyone, it would be Stiles. If he was going to feel this insecure he would rather it were with Stiles than anyone else.

“Someone else can’t decide this for you.”

“What if I don’t want to disappoint them?” Derek brought his eyes to meet Stiles’s. They were amber in the light and Derek found solace there, in the concern and sympathy he saw in the depths. Derek had never mentioned that it was his parents’ expectations he was worried about but Stiles knew. Of course he knew. He was too smart for his own good.

Stiles leaned in closer and spoke in a quiet, even voice. “Your parents loved you. They may have wanted things for you, but they were your parents. That means that first and foremost they love you. And would love you, whatever you became.”

Derek knew Stiles was making sense but he still couldn’t shake his fear. He stared glumly down and the table. “Laura did what they wanted. Why can’t I just do that too? What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you,” Stiles found Derek’s gaze again and held it. “Not everyone can be a doctor, Derek. And what they would have wanted is for you to be happy.”

“Can’t I just be happy and an engineer? Because that’s what they really wanted.”

Stiles gave a small, sad smile. “No, you can’t.” He indicated the DOESN’T LIKE list. “Because if you studied engineering, you’d hate it. Derek, when your parents thought about their children, about you – loving someone means that their happiness comes first, and your expectations after. And your parents loved you.”

Derek closed his eyes, letting the dejection wash over him, and was surprised to find himself tightly bundled into a hug.

Stiles knew. He had to. He had to know how Derek felt reassured just from the physical contact, how holding the omega in his arms made him feel safe and home and okay again, like half the sadness just melted away. And Stiles had to know what he was doing when he had hugged Derek in such a way that Derek’s nose was right up against his throat and Stiles hadn’t sprayed himself with copious quantities of deodorant.

Stiles’s smell wasn’t wildly intoxicating like it was before the suppressants, but when Derek inhaled there was enough omega scent there to both soothe and agitate him. It soothed Derek’s human brain, because he couldn’t deny it, Stiles smelled like _home_ and _right,_ while it agitated his alpha, who only wanted to be closer. But right now, Derek’s human brain was the functioning part and he relaxed, letting Stiles reassure him through the simple gesture of touch.

When he pulled away Derek pointed at the page. “I’m not doing a bachelor’s degree in English. I like it but I would be so bored.”

Stiles sputtered with laughter. “To be honest, I don’t think traditional university is really your thing. Here.” He drew a line horizontally across the page, underneath all the subjects. “Let’s move on to hobbies.”

They filled in Derek’s hobbies, which predictably enough included reading and basketball. “Do you think I could be a teacher?”

Stiles’s eyes flared wider at the same time as his eyebrows lowered, giving Derek the all-around impression that Stiles thought that was a terrible idea. “I think you could but I don’t think you really have the temperament for it?” He phrased it as a question, to make it less offensive, but Derek didn’t mind. “I mean, picture it. You think I’m annoying, imagine, like, twenty-five of me, in one room, all day long.”

Derek frowned. “I don’t think you’re annoying.”

Stiles’s head tilted to each side in an allowing movement. “Okay. Jackson. Twenty-five Jacksons in a room. They hate you and they hate your subject. There’s a reason Harris is the way he is, y’know.”

Derek grimaced. “Yeah, okay. Maybe not.”

Stiles flattened his mouth out into a sympathetic line before his eyes lit up with an idea. “Hey, did you ever think about being a cop?”

Derek’s look turned incredulous. “A cop?”

“Yeah. You help people. And to be honest, the world could use more cops like you.”

Stiles was looking at him with such hope shining in his eyes that Derek actually smiled. “I think you might be onto something.”

 

Since last night at Stiles’s Derek had been internet researching careers in law enforcement, and he was kind of liking what he found.

What he liked about it was that he would get to _do stuff._ Sure, there would be paperwork, but after so many years of sitting in a classroom he had a feeling Stiles was right. He wasn’t cut out for the conventional college route. Being a cop involved training at a police academy, but it wasn’t the same as college. He’d get to run around and pretend to shoot things and not stare at a blackboard bored out of his mind all day.

And there were of course different things to do once you were in law enforcement. All the different courses you could take that would qualify you to move up the ladder in that field. Family Liaison Officer, Extended Driving Skills (which Derek really hoped involved doing handbrake spins), specializing in explosives and arms and so many possibilities it kind of made Derek’s head spin.

But in a good way. Because if Derek was honest with himself, this was way more appealing than biology for the rest of his life. He was scrolling down the page when one particular course caught his eye.

Omega Protection Unit.

He sat back in his chair with a sigh. He wasn’t aware that specific police units for omegas existed, but they were going to have to up their game. Stiles was right about attacks on omegas being way too common, hell, Stiles was living proof. Derek wanted to protect the vulnerable and being an omega in their day and age was about as vulnerable as it got. He clicked on ‘More Information’ and found out why the omega units were so ineffective.

Across the entire country, there were only four.

And nowhere were they actually offering the training courses to join the units. Like they were trying to shut them down. If Derek wanted to help omegas he’d have to find another way to do it.

But was it omegas specifically? There were plenty of defenceless betas and probably a few alphas out there. Everybody needed help from the cops sometimes, and who was he to pick and choose? Bomb squad, he thought, bomb squad could be interesting. That wasn’t physics, it was different. He could totally join the bomb squad.

Derek nodded to himself thoughtfully. Law enforcement it was.


	13. You're Saying I'm Petty?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, another ridiculously Patrick Stump-esque title...

Derek found Stiles looking bleary-eyed and tired as was appropriate for a Monday morning. He slipped him the suppressant discreetly – they’d gotten much better at it, meaning Stiles had discovered the value of subtlety – and Stiles heaved his biology textbook out of his locker.

“Did you think any more about that future career thing we talked about?”

“Yeah,” Derek said, a grin slipping onto his face. This time he remembered to not show too much of his teeth. Stiles was one of the few people not to be scared of him and it would be sad if that changed. “It looks good. Really good, actually. There’s so much stuff you can do, you know? So many options.”

Stiles smiled widely at him, his happiness enclosing them. “That’s great. One problem down, one to go.”

Derek frowned. “One to go?”

“Yeah. About you unnecessarily intimidating people?”

Derek waved a hand. “No, we don’t need to –”

“Yes, we do,” Stiles said firmly, before staring into his locker confusedly. “Wait, what the hell?”

Stiles reached into his locker and pulled out a plastic bag of pills. They were blue and triangular – very obviously not suppressants. “Did you leave these?” he hissed.

“No!” Derek’s eyes went wide. “I’m not a drug dealer! What are they even?”

Stiles opened the bag and gave an experimental sniff. “I have no idea. It doesn’t smell like amphetamine.”

Derek reminded himself that Stiles knew what amphetamines smelled like because he had a prescription for Adderall and not because he was constantly on speed. Although considering his jerky movements and motormouth it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if he actually was. Derek took the bag and smelled. He shook his head, unable to trace anything remotely relevant. Then again, he wasn’t familiar enough with drugs to be able to distinguish between the different ones.

Stiles snatched them out of his hand before anyone could walk past and ask why they were standing with a little drug baggie as clear as day and dashed into the nearest bathroom. He hit his nose on the door and Derek tried not to snigger as he followed him.

When Derek caught up to Stiles, the omega was standing in a bathroom stall with the door wide open, bag upended over the toilet, which was mid-flush. This was an intelligent solution, Derek thought. Don’t worry about it, don’t lose sleep over it, don’t let curiosity win. Just get rid of them. Stiles could not get busted with someone else’s illegal drugs.

Orange wouldn’t suit him.

Stiles chalked the drugs up to some weird alpha present thing and Derek was inclined to accept that theory. After all, nothing else made sense. They couldn’t have gotten there by accident – Stiles’s locker had a lock on it now – so somebody had deliberately put them there. Whatever they were.

Derek didn’t like it.

He didn’t like that somebody was leaving drugs in Stiles’s locker. He saw two options: one, someone was gifting Stiles with drugs, which bothered him immensely, not to mention his alpha, or two, someone was trying to get Stiles busted with drugs, which was downright harmful, and if he found out that somebody actually was trying to set Stiles up then _someone_ was going to get a broken jaw.

Stiles was innocent. He didn’t deserve this crap.

Derek made a mental note of how the pills had looked and resolved to google them later. He was reluctant to part with Stiles, who appeared to be able to smell his concern and hugged him lightly. It was odd how their friendship had begun with Stiles smelling Derek to calm himself down and now it was flipped. Derek worried about Stiles and only being around him seemed to sufficiently soothe him. He didn’t care if people gave them odd looks in the corridor. He didn’t care that the whispers he heard contained his name. As long as Stiles was happy, he didn’t care.

 

 

Stiles was alone in biology and was missing Scott considerably. He liked Lydia Martin well enough but she was sat at another table with Jackson and he was trying his absolute best to avoid Jackson.

Well. He used to have a huge crush on Lydia and dating Malia had been sort of an attempt to get over it. He wasn’t entirely sure whether or not it worked, but as soon as he had presented any residual feelings for Lydia or Malia had gone up in smoke. Because he was an omega, and they were both betas, and betas and omegas didn’t mix too well. Or so he’d read online.

He decided to accept that as his explanation rather than face the alternative, which was that he felt nothing except friendly concern for either of them because he felt something more for someone else.

That was wholly untrue. Absolutely. 100%. No question.

Stiles sighed and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He didn’t even know what to think anymore.

Unfortunately he had managed to attract the attention of one of the alphas from the lacrosse team sitting at a nearby table. Aiden, his name was, his twin Ethan was dating Danny and the two alphas were disgustingly cute together. Alpha-alpha pairings didn’t often work out but theirs did. Aiden was had shifted ever so slightly in his seat so his perpetually mocking smirk was trained on Stiles.

“Hey, omega!” Aiden hissed.

Stiles ignored him. He kept his eyes on Harris and away from Aiden. He’d heard so many “hey, omega”s in the last week or so that he had to physically stop his eyes from rolling right back into his head whenever anybody said it.

“Stilinski.” Aiden insisted.

Stiles shot him an irritated look. “What?”

Aiden’s smirk widened. “Is it true that omega guys have really small dicks?”

Now Stiles’s eyes actually did roll, along with his entire head. “Is it true that alphas have really small brains?”

Aiden’s eyes narrowed and he turned away again. Stiles congratulated himself on this small victory, but his smugness didn’t last long. Ten minutes later Malia, who had decided for some bizarre reason to sit in front of him today, turned around and gave him that confused frowny look she generally reserved for all things Stiles.

“Is it true you’re banging Derek Hale?”

Stiles was almost speechless for a second. He was well aware that while they kept their voices low, most people in the classroom – the alphas, at least – would be able to hear them. “No, Jesus, I’m not banging Derek Hale. What the hell?”

“I know I was a virgin when we were together but was I so bad I turned you gay?”

“I’m bisexual, not gay,” Stiles said irritably. He knew Malia was very frank and didn’t actually have a filter between her mouth and her brain but what she was saying was kind of really rude. “And no, you didn’t ‘turn’ me that way. I just am.”

“So you are screwing Derek.”

“No, for the love of God, I _am not having sex with Derek._ ”

She gave him a look that plainly said she didn’t believe him. “Apparently Jackson caught you two going at it in a bathroom stall.”

“Jackson’s full of shit,” Stiles muttered. “That shouldn’t be news to anybody.”

Jackson heard him, turned around in his seat, and gave Stiles the death glare he liked to use on the captain of the opposing lacrosse team. For the second time that lesson Stiles rolled his eyes. When was this class over?

The bell rang and he managed to escape to math without Jackson wringing his neck out, which he kind of looked like he wanted to do, and slammed his books down next to Scott. He told Scott in the most hushed whisper he could about the drugs in his locker.

“I have an idea that you’ll like,” Scott returned quietly, “It’s a good distraction.”

Stiles eyed him. “It better not be Tinder. You convinced me to do that once, Scottie, and I’m not doing it again.”

Scott struggled not to laugh, remembering the description he had written for Stiles’s bio. And the photo of Stiles with eight chicken nuggets in his mouth that he had referred to as “the dick magnet pic”. Scott had thought he might actually die when he heard that and had added the phrase “yeah, I’m the Sheriff’s son” to the description when Stiles wasn’t looking. “No. I overheard two deputies talking in the corridor. There’s a curfew on for tonight because they found a body in the woods.”

Stiles looked up at his friend in immediate interest. “A body?”

Scott grinned. “Well. Half a body.”

“Dude. We are going.”

 

Scott refused to ditch class to go find the body – “You might be naturally good at English, okay, Stiles, but some of us have to actually go to class” – so they rolled off towards the woods together in Stiles’s car the minute the end of school bell rang. They tried to go off scent, Stiles’s nose being more accurate than Scott’s, and they ended up wandering around the Preserve. 

Scott and Stiles knew the Preserve like the backs of their hands, of that there was no doubt. Stiles had his favourite stump and he and Scott had spent many an afternoon in the woods, leaping over the little creeks and climbing trees. When Scott had first presented as alpha he’d had a lot of hormones to deal with, like most alphas did, and he and Stiles had come out here every night for two months while he raged and yelled and cried and tried to get a handle on his aggression.

Scott wasn’t an aggressive person. He was basically a puppy in the body of a teenage boy but everyone had their instincts. Alphas were protective, often domineering, ruled by their hearts, not their heads, quick to anger and fiercely self-righteous. Betas were cunning, logical thinkers who relied on sharp wit and the ability to outfox any situation. Stiles had identified with all of those things – he was definitely more cunning than Scott, anyway. But omega instincts were something more of a mystery to Stiles.

“Dude,” he said conversationally to Scott as he hopped over a fallen log, “What do you think omega instincts are?”

Scott turned thoughtful. “I read about it online. You’re not the only omega in Beacon Hills. Some people say that omega instincts are to run away all the time. Like fight or flight, if an alpha is fight then an omega is flight. But you’re not like that.”

“I like to deal with my problems by avoiding them until they eventually just go away.” Stiles reminded him.

“Yeah, but a ton of stuff online says that omegas are really quiet and submissive and all they want is approval. I don’t know, man, I feel like there’s a huge mixture of what omegas are and what society thinks omegas are supposed to be.”

Stiles hadn’t realize exactly how much of Scott’s time had been spent researching but he was grateful to his friend for his concern. “People act like I’m just supposed to take it.”

“Exactly, but you’re not, and you don’t.” Scott looked over at him and there was a fierce look in his eyes. “You let it roll off you, and then you get back at people. Like the balloon thing. Traditional omega behaviour, or whatever, would’ve been to ignore all those presents until people lost interest. But you didn’t. You went out and you dealt with the problem yourself.”

“An alpha…” Stiles frowned. “An alpha wouldn’t have done that.”

“No,” Scott agreed, “Most alphas would’ve yelled or hit someone from all that unwanted attention.”

“Betas would either just ignore it or find out exactly who was responsible and deal with it more directly. Which leads us to the conclusion that based on my behaviour,” Stiles almost slipped and fell into a river, “Omegas do…what?”

“The unpredictable.” Scott grabbed an arm to steady him. “You do whatever you have to. Ultimately, your way would be the most effective way. Because omegas are really good at reading people. Alphas can’t rely too much on our instincts or we just see red. Betas can’t either, because half of their instinct is telling them to use their brains. But you can. Because your instincts are different. You understand people and you use that.”

Stiles frowned. “How is that different from a beta?”

“Betas understand _stuff_ , like math and how electricity works and that kind of thing. But you understand people. Why people do what they do. You have better senses for it. And you’re, like, so resourceful. Betas stay in groups but half the time, if someone bullies them, they just let it go. Because there’s no advantage to get from winning.”

“So you’re saying I’m like a beta but more petty?”

Scott laughed and punched his arm. “You are petty. It’s hilarious.”

 

 

 

Derek had gotten home, made himself a snack and then gone straight to his computer.

The drug thing was really getting under his skin. He didn’t know who in the hell would leave them in Stiles’s locker but it was starting to piss him off.

Jackson, maybe? Jackson seemed to enjoy just messing with Stiles and being an asshole to him. Derek didn’t get it. Bullying was often based on jealousy but he didn’t see what Jackson could be jealous over.

And leaving drugs in someone’s locker was not a very alpha thing to do.

He sighed and ran a hand over his face. If an alpha wanted to get Stiles into trouble, they’d do something much more direct, but it still made no sense. Alphas generally didn’t want to get people into trouble, much less omegas. The protective instinct was there, even if some dickheads drowned it out. No, an alpha would have been way more upfront about it, would have preened and postured over their victory.

Putting pills in Stiles’s locker was a pretty beta thing, now that he thought on it. It was underhanded and it was anonymous, but he couldn’t help but feel that he was missing something. They weren't hidden, and anyone who knew Stiles knew that he would sniff out a foreign object in his locker, omega senses or not. No, those pills were meant to be found.

Which led Derek to his next good idea. If they were meant to be found then knowing what they were would be a step in the right direction.

After ten minutes of internet searching Derek was fairly certain that there was only one kind of drug that was generally made in blue triangular tablets.

And that was how Derek Hale ended up googling Viagra.

He wanted to punch himself. The little blue pill, it was called. Because it was pretty much the only tablet that was blue like that. Someone was leaving Stiles Viagra and not illegal molly.

Did Stiles need Viagra? A seventeen year old?

If Stiles actually took Viagra for some weird reason, he would have known what it was when he found it. So this was somebody putting it in his locker, as a weird kind of prank. It was an expensive prank, but not actually against the law. Someone was just trying to mess with Stiles. Make fun of his omega-ness by questioning his ability to get it up. Strange, but not entirely unimaginable.

It wasn’t until Derek read up on the side effects when he began to panic.


	14. 'Steal' Is Such A Strong Word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! To celebrate me getting my driver's license and also because I feel like the world could use a little pick-me-up, two chapters today.

Night had long since fallen and they were no closer to finding the body. Or the torso, or pair of legs, or whatever the hell it was.

Even with Stiles’s omega senses and Scott’s night vision they weren’t doing a very good job. Stiles had brought along a police radio he’d stolen (“‘Steal’ is such a strong word, Scottie, I prefer ‘acquire’”) and from the sounds of it the cops couldn’t find it either. But then the cops didn’t have Stiles’s nose. Or his hearing, which was sharp enough to pick up that there were two people walking leisurely through the Preserve about a mile east.

“Dude. Who the hell goes for a walk in the woods at, like, nine p.m.?”

“Apparently we do,” Scott shrugged. “I can’t hear anything.”

“What time is it, anyway?” Stiles dug his phone out of his pocket only to discover the thing was out of battery. “Can you check?”

Scott checked his phone and turned his red, night-vision eyes on Stiles. “Almost ten.”

Stiles’s night vision wasn’t very good, or existent at all, but he had a feeling that was more of a Stiles thing than an omega thing. His other senses were enough to let him navigate the woods with his usual level of grace, which was about as much as drunk calf on an ice rink, but the dark still creeped him out like it had always done. Last time he’d been out this late he’d woken up at someone else’s house. Granted, it was Derek, who turned out to be a massive lifesaver on more occasions than one, but still.

“I think we should abandon the hunt for today, Scott.”

Scott was shocked. “Are you serious?”

Stiles’s omega was tingling. It wasn’t fear, but something skittled up his spine, something that had to do with the two people who were out walking and who were getting closer. “Yeah. I’m pretty tired. C’mon, I’ll drive you home.”

Stiles was true to his word and did of course drive Scott home. He wandered into his empty house, made himself some food, and zombie’ed his way upstairs. He had just put his phone on charge when it began to ring.

He frowned and picked up. “Derek?”

Derek’s voice was thick with panic and concern. “Stiles, are you there? Stiles?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. What’s up?”

Derek heaved a sigh of relief on the other end of the phone. “Oh. I thought something had happened.”

“Naw, man, my phone just died.”

“Oh. Oh. Okay.”

Something was off, Stiles could tell, but he wasn’t quite sure what. “Derek. What’s bugging you?”

Derek took a deep breath. “It’s nothing. I’ll tell you tomorrow at school. Just – just stay home, okay?”

“Yeah, I just got back. Is everything alright?”

“Back from where?” There was real urgency in Derek’s voice.

“From the woods. Me and Scott were just looking for…something.” Stiles refused to admit to Derek that they’d been looking for a body. Because that was way too dorkish and lame and Derek was the one good thing to come out of this whole omega mess.

“The _woods_? You’ve been in the woods all day?”

The alarm in Derek’s voice caused Stiles to begin to worry. Did he know something about the body? “Yeah. Why?”

“I’ll – I’ll tell you tomorrow.” Derek swallowed audibly. “Just stay home and lock the door.”

 

 

Suffice to say that Stiles was very confused the next day at school.

He opened his locker with more force than was actually necessary, being annoyed that he had English next. He was getting really bored of English. He’d read ahead in the book and not only did he not appreciate Joseph Conrad’s Olde English writing style and lack of actual storyline, he wasn’t sure he understood what was happening.

He could look it up on SparkNotes later.

When he grabbed his things for English he found, staring him in the face, another pouch with a handful of blue tablets in it as nondescript as the day before. He had grabbed them and stuffed them into his pocket when Derek walked up to him.

“Hey. What was all that about last night?”

Derek was very much up in Stiles’s personal space, keeping his voice very low so as to not attract the attention of other students. “I found out what they were. Those drugs in your locker.”

Stiles’s interest was immediately piqued. “You did? What are they?”

Derek gritted his teeth and leaned in right next to Stiles’s ear. He was close enough that his warm breath fanned out over Stiles’s cheek but the omega refused to let it distract him. “Viagra.”

Stiles burst out laughing, not comprehending the look of total panic on Derek’s face and ignoring the stares he got from other people. “You’re kidding, right?”

Derek was not kidding. “Listen, I don’t know if you used to actually take Viagra, but –”

Stiles stopped laughing and stared at him wide-eyed. “No, I have never in my life taken – oh my god, this is bizarre. What a weird prank. I mean Aiden asked me yesterday if omega guys have small dicks but this is even weirder.”

“It’s not just a joke,” Derek held him by the shoulders, as if there was something very bad that Stiles wasn’t understanding. “Someone’s actually trying to hurt you.”

Stiles dismissed it. “How many of those would you have to take before you got hurt? Like you hear about people who take too many and end up with a four-hour boner but that’s just funny.”

Derek looked like he wanted to shake sense into Stiles. He was stressed and panicked and he kept licking his lips but Stiles didn’t get it. “Listen to me. Omegas can’t take Viagra.”

Now Stiles was listening. “What? Why not?”

“It’s a heat inducer. Stiles, someone wants your heat to start at _school_.”

Omega heats, like alpha ruts, were odd things. An omega could generally tell they were going to start a heat soon by a pre-heat smell they would exude, and no scent suppressants could stop that. Heats came twice a year, on the six-month mark after the omega’s presentation. They were generally very regular, and omegas were highly fertile during them.

But they could be triggered by things. Like the rut of a particularly compatible alpha, or certain drugs. And when heats were synthetically triggered, there was no one-week warning, no pre-heat cautionary smell. As soon as the drug took effect, the heat began.

And Stiles didn’t want to imagine what havoc would be caused if an omega heat started at the school.

Partially because he’d never experienced an omega heat. Betas had much milder versions of them on a monthly basis but omega heats were infamous for creating madness. Alphas went crazy at the smell, and the omega’s body wanted any alpha it could get its hands on, even if the mind didn’t. Stiles was absolutely not looking forward to his inevitable heat in a few months’ time.

He pulled the tablets from his pocket, causing Derek’s eyes to widen, and dropped them in the nearest bin. He was not touching them. He felt a few fingers of panic sliver down his spine and Derek must have heard his heart rate increase because suddenly he was in his arms, Stiles’s nose at his throat, Derek muttering soothing nonsense and exuding calming scent.

Stiles felt scared and alone at the prospect that someone would do this to him, but he set his jaw and channelled his fear into anger. If you mess with the bull you get the horns, and while Stiles didn’t have horns, he was damn sure to give as good as he got.

 

 

 

A whole week passed where Derek grew slightly angrier every day.

He had taken to spending all of his time at school with Stiles, walking him to classes even if it made him late to his own. He didn’t care that the rumours that he and Stiles were fucking on every flat surface they could find were still making the rounds, in fact he rather enjoyed them, because it gave him an excuse to think about himself and Stiles engaged in such activities, when thinking about it for any other reason made him feel extremely guilty. He told himself he was just hanging out with Stiles and being a good friend, but they both knew the truth.

The appearance of the pills in Stiles’s locker was a serious threat, and it scared the hell out of them.

Derek was appropriately furious that someone would try to remove Stiles’s agency by taking advantage of his curiosity like that. But, as he told Stiles, anybody who knew him had to know that he wouldn’t just take random drugs left in his locker.

“I was actually really curious,” Stiles had confessed one dreary Wednesday night over Chinese takeout. “If you hadn’t found out what they were I think I probably would’ve done it sooner or later.”

It pissed Derek off that people thought that trying to induce an omega’s heat like that was okay, but what irritated him more was that he had no idea who it was. Every day they opened Stiles’s locker and the little bag was sitting there plain as day. Stiles had swapped the locks out for a combination number but they arrived the next day and the lock was simply snapped. There was never any scent on the bags they could trace, and they had no leads. Unpleasant comments in the classroom was teenage behaviour, but Derek was convinced that leaving heat inducers for an omega to find was something with entirely dark motives. It wasn’t a kid with a bad sense of humour, this was someone trying to do damage and refusing to give up.

And when Derek found out who it was he was going to tear them limb from limb and his alpha was going to enjoy it.

There was no denying that Derek’s alpha had begun to think of Stiles as his omega. He followed Stiles around as much as their different schedules would permit, he stared at everyone Stiles met in the corridor, trying to discern if they were the ones attempting to get him hurt. When one girl had pushed Stiles up against the lockers with a flirty line Derek had heard it from two classrooms away and he had growled out loud.

Fortunately for Derek’s alpha Stiles seemed altogether uninterested in all the attention his gender was getting him. Being with Stiles like they were now, enjoying each others’ physical gestures unquestioningly and relying on the other more and more, he could just about handle. He wasn’t sure he could watch Stiles hug someone else without trying to maim them.

His brain conjured up a mental image of Stiles kissing the alpha girl and had to quell a disapproving rumble in his chest. He wasn’t sure when his alpha had gotten direct access to his mouth and vocal cords but he was having a harder time reining it in lately.

He blamed it on that delightful hint of omega scent that he got whenever he hugged Stiles, the little identifier that the suppressants didn’t quite cover. And his alpha adored the fact that no one else got to smell it, because no one else got close enough, because no one else hugged Stiles like he did.

Well. Maybe McCall smelled it from time to time. But Derek had never really considered Scott a threat like he did every other alpha who went within six feet of his omega.

He was going to have to stop saying ‘his omega’ in his head. One day he would say it out loud and that would be the end of friendship with Stiles.

He padded down the stairs, looking for a drink, stretching and yawning. He was most definitely not looking forward to school tomorrow. On the plus side, he had chemistry with Stiles. On the negative, he had five other classes without Stiles. That was five whole hours that somebody could be hurting him and Derek’s hearing wasn’t attuned enough to hear _everything_ that went on.

He was pouring himself a glass of juice when Peter suddenly rounded the corner. Even his movements were smarmy – was nothing sacred? “So. How’s your friend?”

Peter was obviously messing with him, trying to make him freak out and reveal something. He had barely spoken a sentence but Peter was the most scheming alpha Derek had ever met – really, the guy would’ve been a poster child for a violently jealous beta – and he was downright odd. Derek refused to let his heartbeat rise and kept his eyes innocently on the juice carton. “Which friend?”

“The one on the basketball team,” Peter moved forward, grabbing a bag of Doritos from a cupboard. “The one you bought suppressants for.”

Derek recalled his cover story – an alpha who was possibly about to get a rut – and made a non-committal sound as he set the juice down. “I didn’t get them for him. I just gave him the number.”

“And are they helping?”

Derek shrugged. “He hasn’t gotten a rut yet, I don’t think.”

Peter nodded as if the explanation was satisfactory. Derek doubted it was. Peter might be drunk half the time but during the other half his mind was whirring away, piecing together information and concocting plans. “That omega at your school. What’s his name?”

That one almost caught Derek off guard, but he was really beginning to dislike where this was going so he kept right on lying. When it came to keeping Stiles safe he didn’t even feel bad about it. And while there was barely anybody he trusted more than his family, Stiles would be safest if he stayed under the radar. He had spent enough time as a kid lying his ass off to therapists after most of his family was killed that he was an accomplished liar. “I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to him. Something with a T. Troy? Trayvon? Something like that.”

“You should give him the number. For suppressants.”

Derek quirked an eyebrow as if to say _why would I care?_ And took a sip of his juice.

“You know,” Peter added, as if he was stupid, keeping an inordinate amount of eye contact, “To get close to him.”

Derek raised the eyebrow even further. “Get close to him?”

Peter made an expression like he couldn’t believe Derek wasn’t following. “An omega? Come on, Derek. You _have_ to be curious.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “He’s not my type.”

Peter just smirked. “An omega, Derek. He’s everyone’s type. Hell, he might even be mine.”

Derek had to suppress a growl and was strongly feeling the urge to slash, but something in his brain was telling him that he would only give Stiles away if he did, and while he wanted to maim Peter right then, he wanted Stiles safe even more. He tried to explain away his rise in heartbeat and whatever pheromones he must be giving off. “He’s seventeen. He’s not underage, but that’s a little creepy, even for you.” He didn’t add on everything else he wanted to. _Touch Stiles and I will fuck you up. Hurt Stiles and I will_ shred _you._

Peter grinned in that genuine-but-not-quite-genuine way he always smiled and Derek realized that Peter had just been baiting him. He wasn’t serious. “I’m not actually going to hit on a student, even if he is legal. I was just saying. Omegas have a way of being exactly what everyone wants.”

And that was something Derek’s alpha did _not_ like. The thought of every alpha around wanting Stiles made him want to bundle Stiles up and spirit him off to somewhere remote. Antarctica, maybe. He wouldn’t feel threatened by penguins. “They’re people. I mean the guy smells good but it’s not like it bugs me.”

“Really? How strange. I’ve smelled an omega once before and let me tell you it was heavenly.” Peter’s expression turned almost dreamy and Derek suppressed the urge to slap him. “If only betas smelled like that.”

Derek snorted. “Then nobody would get anything done.”

He decided he’d had enough of this conversation and its slightly dangerous undertones so he walked straight past Peter up to his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and yes, I did gratuitously insert my own opinion of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness here. Because artistic liberty.


	15. Ordinary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again! I can't promise an update tomorrow, but there will definitely be one the day after.

In the end it was the police who found the body.

Stiles had a lot of faith in his omega nose but he found himself getting creeped out by the woods at night. He chalked it up to being an omega and constantly wary of his surroundings and Scott understood. When they hung out it was at home or at restaurants or at the lacrosse field, decidedly public places. Scott scented him, too, rubbing his wrists against Stiles’s throat sometimes if they were going to be out awhile, so he smelled vaguely of alpha. Scott also growled at anyone who looked at Stiles wrong out on the street, which was a lot of people, since Stiles had a habit of tripping, flailing, and just being generally noisy. But he was grateful for Scott’s efforts, because they made him feel safe.

And since all those tablets were being left in his locker he was kind of convinced somebody wanted to hurt him.

Derek was of the same mindset. Making fun of his dick size – which, thank you, Aiden, was _not_ ‘really small’, and that was just rude – was one thing, but trying to start a heat was another. The laws on having sex with an omega were generally fudged, but the wording was clear: you had to have the omega’s consent beforehand, two days into the pre-heat at the latest. Beyond that the omega was considered unable to give consent, because their minds were heat-addled. But alphas weren’t generally convicted for sleeping with omegas in heat because so many gave the excuse that it was ‘just biology’ and they ‘couldn’t control themselves’, or that they’d been trying to ease the pain the omega felt.

Stiles hated it but there was nothing he could do short of find a mate and get claimed – nobody would harass a claimed omega – but he wasn’t about to rush into that with someone he didn’t know or like. ‘Find a mate’ never really worked like that. Your mate found you. You couldn’t just go looking for love and expect perfection to land in your lap.

The more he thought about it the more he was convinced that somebody was trying to do him harm. Taking unlabelled drugs one found in one’s locker was not an intelligent thing to do but it was probably the easiest way to solve a mystery – like what the hell they were. Thankfully Derek’s googling had paid off and they had found out what was there before Stiles had caved to his curiosity and actually tried one.

They were coming up with increasingly creative ways to get rid of the pills. Flushing them was effective but they didn’t want to seem predictable and besides, leaving them on Coach’s desk with a smiley face written on a post-it pasted on top was too funny. Stiles had tried to convince Derek to let him slip three or four into Jackson’s drink and watch him be forced to leave school with a raging hard-on that would potentially last for hours but Derek had just given him the “no, and you’re an idiot” look.

“You really think getting a horny alpha and an omega in a room together is a good idea?”

Stiles snorted. “It’s _Jackson._ I’m pretty sure he’ll still hate me no matter how horny he is.”

Derek had grabbed the bag out of Stiles’s hand and upended it over a nearby bin. “No. I’m not letting you in the same room as an alpha with no control like that.”

“Having a boner does not equal no control.”

Derek opened his mouth and he looked like he was about to say something along the lines of not letting Stiles into a room with an alpha with a boner, either, until he snapped it shut and ducked his head, scratching the back of his neck while the tips of his ears turned pink.

While Derek occasionally made such remarks, about ‘letting’ Stiles do something, Stiles didn’t mind it. If it had been any other alpha who presumed to have control over Stiles or his life, Stiles would have been pissed. He was an omega, not somebody’s property. But when Derek did it his omega felt all warm and squishy, and even Stiles’s human brain kind of liked it. Derek had good intentions, of that much he was absolutely certain.

If Scott had tried to not ‘let’ him into a room, even for his own satefy, he’d have given his friend something to think about.

But on those rare occasions Derek did it, when he growled at a threat or gave the Terminator stare at other alphas when he thought Stiles wasn’t looking, Stiles felt this odd thrill go through him. It was weird and he blamed it on his omega being hormonal, but it was definitely undeniable. Derek looked after him and he liked it.

He didn’t need it. But he enjoyed it nonetheless. Derek cared about him and respected him and that was all pretty awesome.

He had gotten home from a boring Wednesday school day when he spotted his dad’s cruiser parked in the driveway. He pulled a face and dragged himself inside. He and his dad hadn’t spoken beyond the necessary since the frying pan incident, which still hadn’t entirely healed and was still painful when he forgot about it and slammed his arm into something. Which he did at least twice a day.

When he went inside he couldn’t really avoid catching his father’s eye. He smiled stiffly then made to go upstairs, but was interrupted.

“How did that economics test go?”

“Good,” Stiles tried to smile reassuringly but it was more of a grimace. He avoided his father’s gaze. Not making eye contact was a sign of deference, of submission, and he didn’t want to provoke John’s alpha. “I got a B+.”

The Sheriff nodded approvingly. “Well done. I know economics isn’t your favourite subject.”

Stiles did that half-grimace again and tried to shuffle along but John kept speaking. “Stiles, since you presented, I imagine that a lot of alphas at your school have been trying to get your attention…”

Stiles glanced up hopefully. Was this going to be a useful talk where his dad threatened to shoot all harassing parties? Because he would probably take him up on that offer.

His father smiled conspiratorially, as if the two of them were in on a secret, thick as thieves. “Are there any special girls I should know about?”

Stiles’s stomach felt like someone had just dropped a brick into it. He cleared his throat. “Uhm, no, dad, not really, no.”

John’s smile slipped but it was still there, if a little forced. “Any guys I should know about?”

Stiles shook his head. “Nope. There’s no-one. Just me. Nobody else.”

John raised an eyebrow and Stiles’s body began to retreat into itself. “You’re telling me that you presented omega and nobody asked you out?”

Stiles was reminded of the delightful comments telling him exactly what he could do with his mouth and all the presents in his locker. He kind of wanted those back now. He could trade. The presents for the drugs. God, he’d take free candy over freaking heat inducers any day. “No, some people did, but I…didn’t want to go out with them.”

John looked confused. “You said no?”

Stiles cast around, looking for a suitable excuse. “Being an omega…it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. And it wasn’t cracked up to be much in the first place. People are suddenly obsessed with me because I’m an omega. Not ’cause I’m _me._ And I don’t want that.”

John nodded approvingly. “That’s really sensible of you, son. I can respect that.” He got up from his seat and mussed Stiles affectionately in the hair.

Stiles waited until he was up in his room to heave a sigh of relief. That was the first normal conversation he’d had with his dad in ages and it was really weird.

Were they just going to pretend nothing had happened?

Stiles had been pretending nothing had happened because he didn’t really have other options. He had hoped for an apology and a promise of immediate behavioural changes but he was definitely not going to push his luck.

 

 

It was just over a week later when Stiles finally snapped.

This was the third consecutive week in which had found those fucking pills in his locker every day with perfect accuracy. It was a Friday, which was generally a good day, and he was in the almost deserted corridor looking through his locker on his own when those stupid drugs were staring him in the eye.

And he’d had _enough._ Every time he saw them it was like a little mental reminder that someone out there wanted to hurt him and mess with him and he was tired of living with constant anxiety about it. He didn’t go into the woods with Scott anymore, he didn’t leave the house on his own, and he was _sick of it._ Sick of feeling like some kind of goddamn prisoner, sick of whoever wanted to fucking hurt him.

He stood with the locker door clenched in his hand for a long time, white-knuckling around it, fuming and not even trying to control his scent, which must be one big cloud of angry. When Derek found him at their usual meeting spot and hurried over it seemed to hit the alpha like a physical barrier. “Stiles? What’s wrong?”

Stiles clenched the little bag in his hand, crushing half the tablets. “I have had _enough_ of this bullshit.”

Derek had this look like he was proud of Stiles but didn’t want to admit it. “We don’t know who’s leaving them. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find out.” Stiles hissed, eyes flicking over to the wall behind him, a plan forming in his head. “And then I am going to shove these where the sun does not shine and sit back and watch what happens.”

He stalked over to the opposite wall and yanked on the fire alarm.

Immediately a loud ringing noise attacked their ears – because the sirens had to be loud to undeclared kids, whose hearing wasn’t as good, so it was excruciating to everyone else – and they resisted the urge to cover their ears. The few students around them glanced around and began to mill out of the corridor, whereas Stiles went straight for the basement stairs.

Derek followed him, and Stiles felt the alpha’s protective concern envelope him. He appreciated it but right now he didn’t care. He had lived in fear and anxiety for too long and was running on fury. If he kept this up he’d be flashing eyes and teeth but God knew he didn’t give a shit. He took the stairs two at a time as he made his way down to the boiler room.

“There’s no security guard here anymore but they still keep the system running.”

“Stiles? What system?”

Stiles turned around and grinned wolfishly at Derek. “The security cameras. It’s all digital and it backs up automatically.”

Of course Stiles knew way too much about the school’s CCTV system. He arrived at the bottom of the stairs in front of a door, not even bothering to try the handle. They both knew it would be locked. Stiles backed up and before Derek had finished opening his mouth to protest Stiles had slammed a heel just above the lock, breaking it, shoving the mangled door open with a savage smirk. He led Derek into a little room beside the boiler room that looked like it had once been part of it until someone sectioned them off with a stunt wall. A positively decrepit computer sat on a slightly sagging desk in the corner, surrounded by janitor supplies, the room smelling cloyingly of ammonia. Stiles made a beeline for it and booted it up.

It was running an older version of Windows and wanted an administrator logon and password. Derek raised an eyebrow. “Do you have the password? Or the login?”

“I didn’t hang out with Danny so much for nothing.” Stiles turned the computer off and rebooted it. He pressed a key and Derek watched as it booted not into the logon screen but something entirely different. This screen was blue and grey and the mouse didn’t work.

“What is that?”

“It’s the BIOS.” This did not enlighten Derek. “It’s how we’re gonna get in.”

Derek wasn’t entirely sure what Stiles did, but a few minutes later and the computer was loading into regular Windows. Stiles was too smart for his own damn good and any other time Derek would have laughed.

Stiles opened up the files and began the laborious task of sifting through all the cameras. The fire alarm was still going strong upstairs and they could hear everyone evacuating. Hopefully none of the teachers would hear their heartbeats down here. If someone listened hard enough over the shrill of the bell they would know two people were down here, but the possibility was so unlikely that Derek promptly dismissed it. He kept his eyes on the screen as Stiles went through all the folders until he found the one for the right building. Then it was the right floor, then it was the right end, and then, finally, they found it.

Stiles opened up the footage from this morning, surprised with the quality of the image. It was black and white but he could clearly discern facial features on everyone he saw. He tried not to blush when Derek walked in front of the camera and gave them both a spectacular view of his ass. Because he’d never looked at Derek’s ass, never.

He scrolled further back and was rewarded. They’d tried to come to school early to spy on whoever was leaving them, but when the event took place it happened way earlier than they had come in. Just over an hour before school started, even. They had been toying with plans to come in at midnight and just wait for the perpetrator but weren’t sure how that would work with them leaving scent trails, so it appeared that Stiles had preferred direct action.                                                                   

Derek watched in mild apprehension as a senior he knew forced Stiles’s locker open, looked around, then took something out of his pocket and placed it in the locker. They watched the tapes from the last week and it was the same guy, every time.

Ennis.

“I’m gonna kill him.” Derek muttered.

“Not if I get there first.” Stiles closed the computer and made to go upstairs.

Derek caught his arm. “Maybe we should wait down here until they’re done with the fire alarm."

“Good idea.”

 _And maybe we could calm you down,_ Derek thought.

The alpha was calming the omega’s lust for battle. Was nothing ever normal with them?

Derek looked over at the boy with the pale skin, saw the determination there, the fire that blazed in their chocolate depths, the undying passion with which Stiles did everything, and he decided that if the two of them were weird, then he never wanted to be ordinary.

Stiles leaned back in the chair. He was planning all the interesting ways he was going to get back at Ennis when a thought occurred to him. “This isn’t right.”

“No,” Derek agreed, “Leaving heat suppressants for an omega to find is horrible.”

Stiles waved it off. “No, I mean with Ennis. He’s way too dumb to do something like this on his own and he doesn’t have any reason to do this to me.”

Derek raised an eyebrow. “Stiles, some alphas do things like this to omegas. You know that better than most people. It’s disgusting but it’s the truth.” He hated having to refer to the attack that took place just after his omega – fucking hell – had presented, but he knew he was right.

“Ennis is repeating senior year for the third time,” Stiles pointed out, “He doesn’t have the attention span for something like this. If he wanted to mess with me he’d, like, throw me at a wall. Not order Viagra off the internet. It makes no sense.”

“You think someone’s telling him what to do?”

Stiles looked up at Derek with his lips pressed in a hard line. His anger had dissipated, replaced by cold logic. No alpha would have been able to do something like that – Stiles’s control over his own emotions was equal parts staggering and terrifying. One day Stiles Stilinski would take over the world, of that Derek was fairly certain. He would make use of his pack, Derek guessed; Scott was the muscle and hopefully also the moral compass, Lydia the brains and tactician, Allison the strategist and token badass. What did that make Derek? Hired sarcasm? No, Stiles had enough of his own sarcasm. Coffee maker, Derek decided, he could totally make coffee for the global takeover. Cookies too, maybe. Stiles’s voice snapped him back to reality and he wondered how the hell his brain had managed to wander so far off the reservation. “I think we need to find out.”


	16. The Element Of Surprise

Ennis was six foot three and a brick shithouse, but Stiles had a few friends who were more than willing to lend a hand.

Derek was of course game, and Stiles enlisted Scott, who in turn asked Allison to help. Stiles managed to stop the train from going any further before Allison went to Lydia because he didn’t want his little problem getting out and Lydia was great but a notorious loudmouth and news of Stiles’s apparent Viagra addiction did not need to reach Jackson’s ears, like, ever. The four of them were at Scott’s place, going over the plan.

“We lose the element of surprise if we just confront him.” Allison was saying.

“We can’t just sit back and wait for this to escalate.” Derek argued.

And they were both right. It was an impasse. Marching up to Ennis, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and wrenching the truth out of him was an attractive plan in that it would bring Stiles immediate answers to questions that plagued him, like why the hell did Ennis want to induce a heat and who was telling him what to do and what the actual _fuck_?

But then they’d give themselves away to whoever was puppeteering Ennis, which might be a bad idea in the long term. Once they got the information out of Ennis he’d tell whoever was bossing him around that they knew, and they’d be back to square one.

Scott pointed out that knowing who wanted to hurt Stiles wasn’t exactly square one, it was a vital piece of information that they couldn’t move forward without. Derek wanted to do this in the way that would be least likely to get Stiles hurt, and while keeping Ennis in the dark was a smart idea, he had more faith in his own ability to get his hands on the perpetrator and rip them apart.

Yeah, maybe he wasn’t cut out for bringing coffee and cookies. He would be hired muscle number two. He was sure that he was scarier than Scott, given that being scarier than Scott was not actually that hard. The guy was an alpha and protective of his friends but also basically a five foot ten puppy, and while Derek had definitely begun to show his softer side (especially to Stiles), he was most definitely not a puppy. He intimidated people unnecessarily, which he had accepted and gotten over, so if anyone was going to be hired muscle, really, it should be him.

Stiles liked Derek’s plan but he could definitely see Allison’s point. Giving themselves away wasn’t intelligent.

“But waiting for them to up their game is even dumber.” He murmured, causing the others to look over to him.

It was an unusual setup. Allison, Scott and Derek, the two latter of whom were both alphas, all looked to Stiles with deference. His opinion was the most important because he was the one who would be suffering the consequences, but also because when it came to scheming he was definitely the smartest of them. Stiles looked around and was pleased with his choice of friends. “It’s been three weeks. They must be observing us enough to know that I haven’t actually taken any of the drugs yet.”

“So they’re watching you,” Allison said seriously. “Through Ennis, or others?”

“We can’t know that.” Scott supplied. “We can guess if there are others all day long but we can’t be sure.”

A thought occurred to Stiles. “Guys, we’re missing the point.” Everyone looked over at him, and he felt the pressure but also their trust. They were pack, he realized, all of them, their ragtag group of friends, this was what they were. Pack. More than friends, different to family. A family you chose yourself. “Ennis coming in before school, us being watched – this is planned out. Somebody has planned this from the start. Putting drugs in my locker and waiting for me to take them is plan A.”

He looked over at Allison and saw the understanding click in her eyes. When it came to concocting plans she and Lydia were his go-to partners in crime. Their minds analysed threats better than Scott’s ever could. Both of them were good examples of natural beta intellect, but Lydia was really just a force of nature. Allison finished his thought for him. “Something this well planned has to have a backup.”

Stiles nodded. “A plan B. And how long are they going to wait before they start plan B?”

Derek approved of this development, nodding. “We need to act now.”

Stiles’s mouth twitched in something resemling a grimace. “I don’t like it. I don’t like just going all Arnold with the guns out. But waiting around for whoever it is to get impatient isn’t gonna work.”

Allison’s brows furrowed briefly. “Arnold?”

Stiles sighed exasperatedly. “Have you _still_ not seen The Terminator?”

Scott put a hand down on the table they were all huddled around. “We know Ennis comes in an hour early to put the stuff in Stiles’s locker. So we jump him.”

“How are you going to do that?” Allison looked dubiously from one alpha to the other. “You wait for him inside, he’ll smell you, hear you, or something, won’t he?”

“We won’t,” Derek looked over at Stiles, “We’ll be in the parking lot. In my car, he won’t recognize it. And we’ll follow him in.”

“He could just run,” Stiles frowned. “He’d just take off down the hallway when he saw you.”

“It’s Ennis,” Scott reminded him, “He’s, like, the world’s most stereotypical alpha. He’s not gonna run.”

“Stiles is right,” Allison insisted, “You need to think tactics. One person coming at him from each end of the corridor. One of you can come from the parking lot but somebody needs to be in the actual school.”

“He won’t smell me,” Stiles pointed out, “I don’t smell very strongly, and I can hear better than he can.”

“If Ennis sees me and Scott standing in one end of the hallway and you in the other which way do you think he’ll run?” Derek seemed amused before but now he turned serious. “You’re not joining the fight, Stiles.”

Stiles was annoyed beyond belief but he knew Derek was right. He’d be useless in a fight. It wasn’t like he was a fragile omega but Derek and Scott were alphas. They were just better at fights. And that was okay. Even if it was frustrating as hell and made Stiles look incapable.

“Actually, it’s better if you don’t come in the school at all,” Scott added reluctantly. Stiles knew Scott had his best interests at heart but being told what to do incensed him and he bristled. “You’ll leave fresh scent trails, which will let him know something’s up.”

Derek furrowed his eyebrows. “If Scott and I wait in the carpark, one person follows Ennis in through the main entrance, someone else can get to the junior lockers from the lacrosse field.”

“It’s slow but it will work.” Stiles nodded. “Okay. That’s a good plan. And when you’ve punched him a little I’ll come in and ask questions.”

“No.” Derek ground out. “Stiles, you can’t. We don’t know what he wants with you. It’s too dangerous.”

“You can’t stop me.” Stiles said indignantly. “This is _me_ he’s trying to fuck up, guys. I want to be there.”

Derek looked over at Scott and they seemed to communicate without anything being said. “Fine.” Scott allowed.

 

 

 

The weekend passed quite quickly.

Stiles did all his homework Friday afternoon, and went out with Scott. They used the pizza voucher he’d gotten for his birthday and stuffed their faces with pizza, saw a movie, and hung out at Stiles’s.

He spent Saturday researching careers in law enforcement with Derek, who appeared to be warming to the idea more and more. When Derek mentioned a fleeting interest in the bomb squad Stiles dragged him down to the police station, despite Derek’s protests, to see some deputy or something who had been in the bomb squad.

“Stiles, let’s not bother the guy –”

“Hey, Parrish!” Stiles caught a glimpse of the deputy in question once they’d gotten past the front desk and beamed. “Do you have a minute?”

After a few minutes of talking to deputy Parrish Derek was fairly convinced that the bomb squad was not what he wanted. Even before Parrish started in on some of his utterly horrifying war stories, everything Derek heard sounded like _eeeeeeek no._ Parrish caught this expression and flashed him a smile. “Derek, why do you want to be a cop?”

The question caught him off-guard and he replied honestly. “To help people.”

Stiles felt something kind of like pride in his chest and smiled over at Derek.

“Okay,” Parrish said, “Well, here’s an idea. You mentioned Special Arms and Tactics as being interesting. If you wanted, you could go for SWAT training, and if you like it you could even try out for the HRT.”

“What’s the HRT?”

“Hostage Rescue Team. Basically really elite SWAT teams. The training is crazy and it’s tough to get in, but if you really want to help people…google it. They rescue people from terrorists and all that kind of thing.”

They had then hung out at Derek’s, having the house to themselves as Laura was working and Peter was out at something inexplicable. Derek had no idea what the guy did all day besides drink Scotch and the last time he had asked he got an answer he didn’t want to hear again. Peter was a known womanizer and prone to oversharing just to make his nephew uncomfortable. They ate junk food and watched Star Wars, argued over which film was best (Stiles rooted firmly for _Empire Strikes Back_ but Derek had a weird soft spot for _Revenge of the Sith_ that Stiles thought maybe had something to do with Anakin’s hair).

Sunday Stiles spent at home, watching TV and relaxing. He prepared himself for the coming fight by googling Krav Maga moves. He had no plans to join the inevitable fray but he wasn’t going to let himself be more vulnerable than necessary. Without anyone to practice with, though, his ability to break a chokehold was going to be limited.

 

 

He woke up ridiculously early on Monday morning and threw on his clothes in a nervous rush. He was reminded of a Polish saying his mother would occasionally use to communicate the early hour of the day. Since she died he hadn’t spoken Polish with anyone, hadn’t wanted to. It was a thing between him and his mother, their own language, their own world, and while his had been rusty she never chided him for it.

But that didn’t mean he could forget all the little idioms and metaphors for things that she would occasionally whip out.

 _Before the devil had his shoes on,_ that was the saying. To be up before the devil had his shoes on was to be up insanely early and that was about how Stiles was feeling, bleary-eyed and yawning, trying to stretch his limbs in the hopes of waking them up.

The Sheriff had been home last night and they’d eaten a very quiet meal together, so Stiles tiptoed around the house as to not wake his father. He had packed all his stuff the day before and had sneaked his metal baseball bat out to the car. It was as silently as he could possibly manage that he grabbed his things and headed out the door.

Only the Jeep wouldn’t start.

Stiles frowned. The engine hadn’t had problems in a while, it had been serviced two months ago, and he hadn’t noticed any weird noises. He sighed, muttered to himself, and opened up the hood of his car.

He rummaged around in the engine, swore loudly and angrily kicked a tyre as he found a rather vital piece missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, 'before the devil gets his shoes on' is not a Polish saying. It's actually Danish ("før fanden får sko på") but idk I thought it fit really well here so I'm pretending. Artistic license and all that.


	17. Going Arnold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have made it my PERSONAL MISSION to keep up with the comments, since I haven't replied to quite a few questions and interesting remarks and stuff, so yeah. That is coming! Soon!

Derek and Scott were sitting in his car in the almost deserted parking lot.

They’d found out why Ennis came in to school an hour early; the football team had practice in the mornings, which explained why there were other cars around. In reality it helped them, made them less likely to be noticed. Derek’s car was less of a sore thumb than the baby-blue Jeep but it was still ostentatiously sleek.

“I still feel bad about this,” he told Scott honestly, searching the other boy’s eyes for a shred of regret. “He’s gonna be so pissed.”

Scott turned around to glance uneasily at the alternator they’d misappropriated from Stiles’s car while he’d been asleep. He didn’t know much about cars but he understood that an alternator was important to the car’s electrical circuits, and that the Jeep’s circuits were dodgy as hell and held together with duct tape. “Yeah, but…he’ll understand. He’ll be mad but he’ll understand.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re his best friend.” Derek grumbled. If truth be told his stomach was twisting itself into knots, and not over the prospect of punching Ennis. They had done this for Stiles’s safety but Stiles was probably going to hate him afterwards, and he really, really didn’t want Stiles to hate him.

“Yeah, what _do_ you want with Stiles, anyway?” Scott phrased the question casually but Derek could see it had been eating at him. The other alpha was a terrible actor.

Derek held eye contact, trying to stress his honesty. “He’s great. He’s a good friend.”

Scott’s tone stayed even. “You just want to be his friend?”

Derek didn’t even know at this point, what his and Stiles’s relationship was, or what he wanted to be. He knew he wanted to protect Stiles with everything he had and he knew that seeing Stiles happy also made him happy. He looked away, trying to discreetly glance around the car park. It was after a short hesitation that he replied, “Yeah.”

Scott smiled, breaking into half a laugh and staring out at the mostly empty car park. “Hey, if you’re into him, that’s cool, man. Don’t worry about it.”

Derek’s eyes flicked over in Scott’s direction but he resolved to keep silent.

“But, y’know, if you hurt him I’ll fuck you up.”

Derek looked over at Scott in mild alarm and was surprised by the sincerity he could smell. This wasn’t alpha posturing or Scott being a dick, but honest concern for a friend. Family. Pack. Derek nodded slowly but was saved from having to answer by the arrival of Ennis’s car.

They ducked down low, keeping out of sight, watching with wide eyes as Ennis stepped out of his car and walked into the school. As soon as their target was out of immediate hearing range Scott took off, sprinting his way over to the other entrance. Derek waited for Scott’s text before getting out and following Ennis into the school.

They weren’t perfectly synchronized, Scott taking a little longer to get to the corridor than Derek, but it was enough so that they got the message across. Scott took several steps forward to cut Ennis off from running up the stairs, but it was all very precautionary. Alphas didn’t run, even when they were outnumbered. They were hard-headed and went down with the ship.

They found Ennis closing and locking Stiles’s locker, and Ennis glanced over, knowing he’d been caught. He stayed perfectly still while Derek took a few slow, steady steps towards him.

“So…Ennis.” Derek’s tone was even but there was definitely an edge to it, a display of the alpha who was here to protect his Stiles. He jerked his chin in the direction of the locker. “What are you putting in the locker?”

Ennis grinned widely, teeth on display, and Derek could see his train of thought. Ennis thought they didn’t know what was happening. “Can’t tell you that. Private transaction.”

“Ennis!” Scott yelled from the other end of the corridor, alpha rumble seeping into his voice. He was obviously furious and slightly out of control and Derek realized that they had involuntarily stepped into good cop/bad cop interrogation mode. And why the hell was he good cop? He wanted to beat the shit out of Ennis, his alpha was urging him to protect his omega and – fucking _hell,_ he had to stop that. Stiles wasn’t ‘his’ omega. “Why are you leaving those drugs for an omega to find?”

Scott was apparently tired of dancing around the subject, and Derek agreed wholeheartedly, so when Scott grabbed Ennis by the shirt and shoved him up against the wall Derek was there in a flash to help.

Ennis struggled, but was rewarded with Scott’s fist eliciting a shudder-inducing crunch from his jaw that was almost a lullaby to Derek’s alpha. Derek smelled the blood and the pain that Ennis was exuding but what they needed was fear.

Derek seized hold of the scruff of Ennis’s shirt and leaned right into his personal space. He let his alpha rise to the surface, gave himself over to the savage beast. He punched Ennis in the stomach, hard, twice, felt his canines come out and knew his eyes were red, and when he next spoke with the heavy, submission-inducing tone of a protective alpha, he smelled panic wafting off the senior.

“Why are you leaving drugs in Stiles’s locker?”

Derek had used the alpha voice, with its weight and the effect it had of compelling people to listen. It wouldn’t work very well on Ennis, given that he was also an alpha, and it wasn’t all-encompassing anyway – it didn’t make anyone do anything they were violently opposed to, it was just generally uncomfortable and intimidating. And that was exactly the purpose it needed to serve right here and now.

Ennis ducked and tilted his head to the side in a mild show of submission and a small whine escaped the back of his throat. “I’m not supposed to say.”

Scott slammed a fist into a nearby locker, causing it to dent and reverberate with a painfully loud clanging. He let the alpha come to his aid too, eyes glowing and forceful tone. “Ennis. Who told you to do this?”

Derek’s hand tightened around Ennis’s throat as Scott clamped hold of the shoulder and dislocated it with one swift jab. Ennis bucked against the wall, finding no give, and howled in pain. “The society did!”

Derek pushed his forearm against Ennis’s throat and used his spare arm to put a light pressure on Ennis’s chest. “Do you know how many ribs the human body has?”

Ennis’s eyes went wide in fear, which by now had saturated the hallway, and his speech came out garbled. “The Lambda. They’re called the Lambda. My boss – he knows them – they gave me money – said it was harmless, just a joke, it’s just Viagra – I don’t know who they were –”

Derek loosened his pressure, since Ennis was starting to turn red, and Ennis gulped gratefully. “I swear, I don’t know who they were, honestly, man –”

“Who’s your boss?” Scott interrupted. Derek had allowed his fangs to recede, begun to quash the alpha, and he saw that Scott had done the same. “Your boss, what’s his name?”

“Deucalion, his name’s Deucalion, I swear, that’s all I know!”

Ennis’s heart was beating rapidly, but that was due to having a dislocated shoulder which Derek was currently leaning on and being scared, not because of a lie, and Derek released him, took a few steps back and gestured down the hallway. “Go.”

Ennis hurried away, and Derek turned to Scott with a sigh, rubbing the hairs on the back of his neck. “Wow.”

Scott looked up at him with a tired expression, which quickly turned alert when they heard a familiar sound. “What – how?” The Jeep rolled into the parking lot about as discreetly as an elephant in a jewellery shop and they could practically smell the anger already. Scott’s head sank down to his shoulders in dread. “We’re – we’re fucked.”

Derek agreed but they had to face Stiles sooner or later, they’d known he’d be furious, it was best to just get it over with. Scott’s face, however, was unnerving him, because Scott had more experience with angry Stiles than he did and Scott looked about ready to bolt. Not typical alpha behaviour under any circumstance. What was it about Stiles that transcended gender boundaries?

The door slammed and they saw Stiles round into the corridor, glaring as he stamped up to them. He held a metal baseball bat that he threw to the ground near his feet when he saw it was just them. “Seriously, guys? You just decide I’m not allowed to come and you disable my freaking car?”

Scott tried to deflect. “How did you get it here?”

“The wiring is old but the battery is from ’14, Scott!” Stiles shouted, “You can drive without a damn alternator if you drive with no lights on like some kind of idiot!” Scott winced at his lack of car knowledge and stood quietly. Stiles rounded on Derek. “Was this your smart idea?”

“No,” Scott interjected honestly, which Derek was grateful for. “It was mine. I didn’t want you here. Derek agreed but it was me who did the thing with your car.”

“Listen, guys, I know I’m an omega but I’m not completely useless!” Stiles’s cheeks were pink and Derek could feel the little cloud of frustration that enveloped him. It was unusual to be able to smell Stiles’s emotions like that. Either Stiles was so upset he had no control or he was so angry he wanted them both to feel it. The jury was still out on which of those was worst.

“It’s not because you’re an omega.” Derek murmured, keeping his eyes on the floor. It was a submissive gesture, and he desperately wanted to show Stiles that it wasn’t, it wasn’t to do with his gender, Derek wasn’t just another alpha dickhead who thought he was helpless and couldn’t handle his own fights, but this was Ennis and Derek would never forgive himself if Stiles got hurt.

“We were worried about you.” Scott added quietly. “We thought maybe the people controlling Ennis might be here, in the parking lot or something. Didn’t want them to get near you.”

Stiles pointed at the bat. Derek was surprised to see it had more than one dent in it. “I’m not defenceless!”

“Until you lose it.” Derek said before he could stop himself and wanted to stuff a fist in his mouth. He was right, and Stiles knew it, but this wasn’t the time or the place. “Sorry. We just didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“I also have teeth!” Stiles bellowed. His eyes turned blue and he bared his extended canines, but Derek was too mesmerized by that colour for the threat to hold any weight. He hadn’t seen it in weeks, and he felt like his memory didn’t do it justice. Stiles glared from one sheepish alpha to the other and let the omega fade away again.

Scott realized something. “Stiles – while you do that – the scent suppressants –”

Derek took a sniff of the air and nearly coughed. Stiles’s heady omega scent hung the air, stronger than before and utterly mouth-watering. It yanked at Derek’s insides, told him to hold the omega and protect him at all costs, and then to do other things that Derek could definitely not think about right now. As soon as Stiles had pushed his omega back he had stopped emitting the scent, but the remnants of it still engulfed them. “Scent suppressants stop working.” Derek’s voice came out half a croak. “It’s a good thing you didn’t do that to Ennis.”

Scott looked over at him darkly and he understood. Scott must have felt it too, or known what it did, at least. If Stiles had done that to Ennis he would have been royally screwed.

Stiles swallowed. He looked anxious at this new information, his anger having simmered down to irritation. “Is it that bad?”

“I think it’s supposed to attract alphas,” Scott mumbled. “And it – it works.”

Surreally, in the middle of all the seriousness, Stiles burst out laughing. He laughed long and hard, like he hadn’t laughed in ages, and his expression was teasing when he looked over at Scott. “Don’t tell me you’re gay for me, Scottie.”

Scott turned a delicate, splotchy shade of pink and muttered something about having a girlfriend that only caused Stiles to laugh more. Derek was immensely relieved that Stiles was taking this lightly and he was enjoying watching Scott shuffle uncomfortably more than he should have.

Stiles sighed happily and murmured something about the two of them being assholes before opening his locker and clenching a fist around the pills. He crushed them and threw the bag carelessly into the nearest bin. “Whatever. You guys have to tell me everything.”


	18. Pack Mentality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a few days since my last update and this isn't exactly normal, but I was on a long-haul flight for 28 hours. TWO new chapters today and then the updates will pick right back up again.

Finding out who Deucalion was wasn’t easy.

Nobody knew Ennis actually had a job, so finding his boss was kind of a stretch. Stiles looked up his record at the station when Parrish went to the bathroom, which was clean. Ennis hadn’t been in school for a little while so they couldn’t really ask him and God knew the guy didn’t have too many friends.

But he did have at least one.

Ethan and Aiden knew Ennis. How was unknown but they definitely knew each other. They hung around and occasionally ate lunch together but nobody was having any luck getting information out of them.

Stiles slammed his lunch down at the table opposite Derek while Scott and Allison did the same, albeit more gently, beside them. They’d been neglecting Lydia and Jackson lately in favour of their plans, but the others didn’t seem to mind. Lydia had plenty of girls who fluttered around her like frantic butterflies, and there were other guys from various sports teams who looked at Jackson with stars in their eyes.

“Okay, so Aiden won’t talk.” Scott began. He had questioned Aiden in math class and hadn’t gotten very far. Aiden ignored him and later just told him to shut up, and Scott wasn’t about to pursue it violently. Starting a fight with another alpha was just so not worth it. “Did you have any luck with Ethan?”

“The guy avoids me,” Stiles complained, “I don’t know what’s wrong. He just looks at me like I’m some kind of a plague.”

“You did bite his dad once.” Allison reminded him.

Derek snorted into his pasta and Stiles rolled his eyes. When he was ten he’d wandered off into the forest and fallen asleep. His dad had put out an APB and Ethan and Aiden’s father had been the one to find him. When the deputy had tried to wake him up, Stiles had bitten him on the arm hard enough to leave a scar. “That was ages ago. And Aiden doesn’t look at me like that. It’s all water under the bridge.”

Derek repressed a laugh, but not well enough, he judged by the stern look Stiles shot him. He cleared his throat. “Danny might know.”

“Cool,” Scott remarked, looking over at Stiles, “We can ask him at practice.”

 

 

It transpired that Ennis had been doing some informal work at a nightclub downtown, where he was apparently a bouncer and his boss, Deucalion, was the owner. Danny knew this because Ethan had told him, but also because he’d been to the club in question and seen Ennis there. Ennis liked Danny well enough – boyfriend of a good friend kind of thing – to give him a free pass when it came to age and waiting in line, and, Danny explained, Ethan and Aiden had been close with Deucalion ever since their parents died five years ago. Scott and Stiles deduced that it must be through Deucalion that the twins knew Ennis.

“So Deucalion is the one paying Ennis to put the pills in Stiles’s locker.” Derek explained to the group at large.

“But Ennis thinks it’s just a prank. A harmless one.” Allison frowned at the snack chips Stiles had stacked on the coffee table and settled herself better into the sofa next to Scott. “Does Deucalion know the truth or is he being manipulated also?”

“Deucalion owns, like, a small empire of clubs around here.” Scott pointed out, “And he’s probably responsible for a lot of the drugs drifting around. He’s not an idiot.”

Stiles tried to rationalize. “People like that like power.” He rubbed his forehead and tried to articulate. He knew what he meant, but he was having a tough time forming it into words. “They don’t like being manipulated. They control other people. They hate it when people do it to them. Deucalion is a businessman. I don’t think he’s being controlled per se. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

“But he’s part of this secret society, the Lambda.” Scott furrowed his eyebrows. “Which we still don’t know what is.”

“We need to talk to him. To Deucalion.” Derek crunched a crisp. “But how to do it without raising the alarm?”

“I’ll ask my dad,” Allison offered, “Maybe he knows.”

“We can’t just approach Deucalion, guys,” Stiles knotted his fingers together, “He’ll see it coming. I’ll ask my dad.”

Stiles was dreading having to initiate conversation with the Sheriff but if it had to be done, it had to be done, and he was dying to know what the secret society was all about. Who even had secret societies anymore?

 

 

 

Chris Argent had more than a few things to say about the Lambda.

When Allison discovered that he was actually kind of an expert she invited them all over after school. Argent was a beta and although he sold weapons to law enforcement for a living, he had a long family history of hunting cruel and violent alphas who victimized those of lower hierarchy. Stiles was suitably impressed with the guy.

Chris flashed him a tired smile. “Is it tough being at school?”

Stiles was taken aback but pleased regardless. When most people talked about life as an omega they smelled only of pity, but there was understanding in the beta’s eyes, understanding which Stiles appreciated. “In the beginning. It’s not as bad now.”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Suppressants are a smart idea. Just don’t get caught.”

Stiles’s eyes went wide. “You can tell?”

Chris shrugged. “Been at this a long time.” He turned to address the group as they sat around the dining table. He didn’t seem a huge fan of the two alphas in his presence, but that might just have been because Scott was dating his daughter and Derek was kind of scary. “I don’t know how involved you guys have gotten with the Lambda, but they’re nasty.”

“Okay, but what are they?” Scott leaned towards him. “Secret societies are secret for a reason, right? They have a purpose?”

Chris nodded. “I’ve had a lot of dealings with the Lambda and some of their sister groups, and they’re honestly a little insane.” He cleared his throat and his eyes lingered on Stiles when he next spoke. “The Lambda are a group that believe that the hierarchy should be more distinct, in favour of the upper layer.”

Derek furrowed his eyebrows. “More distinct? How?”

Argent looked Derek dead in the eyes but Derek didn’t flinch. “They believe that alphas are superior.”

“A lot of people believe that.” Allison pointed out, “It’s not politically correct but a lot of people think that. That’s not insane, it’s just wrong.”

Chris shook his head. “No. The Lambda are extremists. They believe that alphas exist to take advantage of the others. That alphas, because they are stronger in some aspects, have the right to use their strength against betas and omegas. It’s Darwinism gone too far. They also believe that the others exist _for_ alphas, to do with whatever they want.”

“That’s sick.” Derek swallowed back a lump that had formed in his throat. Stiles could smell his disgust even across the table. Chris looked over at Derek and some of the disapproval lifted from his eyes.

“It is,” Chris added, “And it gets people hurt. I’ve been trying to get them arrested for some time now but it’s not easy. The Sheriff’s department knows but is unwilling to bring them in, even with evidence. They’re some powerful individuals.”

“The Sheriff’s department knows?” Stiles stared up at Chris in disbelief. Somebody had to tell his dad. Who in the department would know and not tell the actual Sheriff? “Who? Why haven’t they told the Sheriff?”

Chris gave a wry laugh. “Stiles, I don’t know if you’ve met the Sheriff, but he’s aware. Trust me, he’s seen enough to know.”

Stiles slumped back in his chair, mouth wide open. It couldn’t be. His dad wouldn’t, he wouldn’t let some douchebag club hurt betas and omegas for no reason other than their own pleasure. His dad was better than that. He had to be.

Chris seemed to be able to read his thoughts. “To be honest with you, Stiles, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a member.”

Stiles snapped his jaw shut and felt the floodgates lower as he lost the hold on his emotions. He felt like he was going to cry and scream simultaneously and it was massively overwhelming. There was a pounding in his ears and Chris had begun to look at him worriedly. Everyone was staring at him, and their concern was stifling. He had to get out.

He bolted to his feet, knocking over the chair behind him. He was halfway to the door when he vaguely heard Derek mutter “I’ll make sure he gets home.”

Once they were outside Stiles buried his face in his sleeve and howled. Derek was beside him in an instant, holding his shoulders and trying to talk sense into him. It didn’t work. Stiles could barely hear anything, but he felt it when Derek pulled him into a hug, briefly stunning him into silence.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. He slid slowly back to reality, nose buried in Derek’s shoulder, taking deep breaths of Derek’s calming scent, clutching onto Derek like he was a life raft in a stormy sea. Derek just kept his arms around his middle and held him.

Stiles drew comfort from the physical touch and gave Derek a small, tired smile once he’d pulled away. Derek drove him home in his Jeep and they sat outside the house for some time. Stiles seemed nervous, but Derek couldn’t see the Sheriff’s car parked outside.

After a long pause and a lot of fiddling and nail-biting, Stiles finally asked. “What if he is a member?”

Derek swallowed at the thought of Stiles living with a father who was a member of that kind of horrible elitist club. Of an omega, _his_ omega – Jesus, this was getting out of hand – having to go through such a thing. “Then you’re not safe at home anymore.”

“And then what?”

Derek looked over, meeting Stiles’s gaze and trying to reassure him. “We report him. To the authorities.”

Stiles just gave him that same exhausted look and it broke Derek’s heart. “That won’t work. Even if it does, at best they’ll declare him an unfit father, but I’m seventeen now. He’ll just kick me out.”

Derek’s alpha was growling at the sadness Stiles was radiating and without thinking about it he put a hand over Stiles’s. “Hey. Listen to me. It’s gonna be fine, okay? I’ll make it fine. We’ll take care of you.”

And Stiles didn’t know why, but he believed him.

Derek removed his hand and Stiles realized how cold his hand felt without Derek holding it. He wanted to hold Derek’s hand, feel Derek’s skin, and when he looked up at Derek he wanted to lose himself in those eyes and touch those lips and –

“I should go,” Stiles whispered. He opened the car door awkwardly. “Thanks for the ride.”

Derek nodded at him, tossed him the keys, and Stiles watched as he disappeared into the night with an easy loping gait. When Stiles let himself into the house and fell onto his bed, the coldness he felt in his hand had spread to the rest of his body, and he wondered when he’d craved something as simple as just touch this much.

 

 

 

Now that they knew who had been putting drugs in Stiles’s locker, the next big question was _why._

After Stiles had left Chris had talked to the others more about how the Lambda operated. They were smart, and they thought ten steps ahead.

“Argent thinks that the heat inducers aren’t the endgame,” Scott was explaining to him on their way to history class, “He says they don’t do anything without thorough research and preparation.”

“So, what, I’m a guinea pig?” Stiles frowned at Scott. “They’re a society of alphas who live off oppressing everyone else. I think they’ve met an omega or two before.”

Scott nodded. “That’s what Allison told him, which leads us to the next theory: that it’s not a group decision, just one member acting alone.”

“Deucalion. But what does Deucalion want with me?”

Scott shrugged. “They think you only exist for whatever sick reason they want you to. Probably they’re just doing what they think is okay.”

Stiles repressed the urge to vomit. “What are we gonna do about it?”

Scott turned to him with a wide, toothy, slightly threatening grin as they rounded into the classroom. “Derek, Chris and two of Derek’s friends are breaking into Deucalion’s apartment. Like, right now. They’re looking for a membership list or something to lead us to the Lambda. Chris says that they have this old-school charter, where they all sign their names in blood.”

“Blood?” Stiles was disgusted. “Their own blood?”

Scott avoided his gaze. “Omega blood.”

Stiles set his books down on the desk. “Well, that’s not disturbing at all. Wait, Derek has friends?”

“Erica and Boyd.” Scott looked over at him and Stiles was surprised by how calm he seemed. “I met them. They’re cool.”

Stiles wondered to himself when exactly his friends had become such good schemers. They’d pulled all this crap without him even knowing – hell, Derek was breaking into someone’s _house_ for him – and it did make him think. The Lambda might be assholes but he couldn’t have asked for a better pack.


	19. Echo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: I am so sorry but when I uploaded this chapter I accidentally missed off the first few hundred words. Thanks to lucidscreamer for picking up on that - I didn't even catch it. Sorry for messing with ya heads, but I've updated it now so it should all be good. Thanks for sticking with me!

They went straight over to Allison’s to meet up with Derek, Chris and the other two after school. Scott had wanted to help break in but Chris insisted that it was best if he stayed with Stiles. In fact, he had apparently told them last night, Stiles shouldn’t be alone more than necessary, since there was a semi-psychotic elitist club after him.

Stiles felt mollycoddled and not in a good way, but his friends were trying to protect him from some very real threats so he shut up and pushed his feelings down. They had found the charter and, grossly enough, it _was_ written in blood, with names in spidery, old-fashioned handwriting running down the page.

“We haven’t read it.” Derek looked over at him, eyes flickering in anticipation. “We wanted to wait for you guys.”

Chris handed Stiles the bound-up scroll and Stiles unravelled it with slightly trembling hands. The tension was so thick in the room that Stiles had to actively shut off his sense of smell so it didn’t get to him. He was jittery enough as it was, didn’t need everyone else’s nerves exacerbating his own.

He was flooded with relief so quickly it was almost painful when he saw that his father’s name wasn’t on the list before he read it again. And again. And swore.

“What?” Scott said nervously. “Is it your dad?”

Stiles put the scroll down. “No.” He passed it wordlessly over to Derek.

Derek didn’t need to look at it. He was only closely related to one alpha. He swallowed and stared at the paper in a fiery rage that weighed on everyone in the room. “Peter.”

Stiles nodded. “And Mr. Lahey. Isaac’s father.”

“Who the hell is Isaac?” Erica quirked an eyebrow at him. Chris and Boyd seemed to agree with her.

Stiles sighed. “He’s in our year. His dad used to hit him for being a beta. He stopped, though.”

Scott tugged at his sleeve. “Stiles. Isaac didn’t show up for lacrosse today.”

Chris’s eyes turned hard. “I’ll drive.”

 

 

When they arrived on the Lahey doorstep, they must have looked like the beginning of a bad joke. Two alphas, a beta, and an omega.

Allison, Erica and Boyd had stayed behind to look up the rest of the names and find out exactly who was in the damn club while the others had gone to check on Isaac. They began to think their fears were unfounded when an innocent-looking Mr. Lahey opened the door, polishing his glasses, a fatherly smile on his face.

“Can I help you boys?” He had completely ignored the adult man – Chris – and the dismissal of the beta was clear in his tone, but Chris had heard this kind of thing before way too much to be bothered by it, so he smiled stiffly and let Scott take the lead. They had agreed that Stiles should stand in the back so as not to attract attention, and he was wearing Scott’s hoodie so he would hopefully smell like alpha and not a suspiciously scentless person.

“Hi, sir.” Scott’s smile was all sunshine, as though all was right with the world. “Is Isaac home?”

Mr. Lahey put his glasses on. “I’m afraid not, he’s out at work.”

He knew Derek had caught the tiny blip in Mr. Lahey’s otherwise steady heartbeat by the way his ears seemed to prick up, but it was something entirely other that Stiles could hear.

A pounding, very erratic and irregular, obviously not any kind of music. It was distant, as though muffled, but Stiles frowned, ignored Scott’s bubbly rambles, and listened harder. Derek was watching him intently, trying to discern the sound, but it seemed like only the omega’s hearing was powerful enough. Stiles closed his eyes, focusing entirely on the noise, when he heard something that sounded like sobbing and – a yell?

“Oh – oh god.” Stiles gasped, pushing past Derek and Chris and ducking under Mr. Lahey’s arm. He ran into the house, ignoring Mr. Lahey’s angry shouts, and followed that terrible, pathetic sound. If he had to put a name to it he would say it sounded like human suffering, and this was at the forefront of his mind when he flung the basement door open and took the steps two at a time. It wasn’t about omega instincts, something awful was happening, he could hear it but – what the hell was that echo? What were the fists echoing off?

The lights were on, and though the basement was littered with the paraphernalia of a lifetime Stiles could hear exactly where to go. The others had overtaken Mr. Lahey and Stiles heard them following him rapidly down the hallway, but his focus was on one thing only as he made his way to an unplugged freezer with several lengths of chain wrapped around it. It had previously had an intelligent locking mechanism but that appeared to have been broken, hence the need for chains.

He didn’t see any boltcutters so Stiles yanked one of the rings of chain off the end of the freezer and was able to easily pull the rest away without actually having a key for the padlock. It wasn’t meant to keep people out, but rather keep someone in, and he shuddered at the thought. He was vaguely aware that his friends were all standing at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Lahey yelling in the background, but he didn’t care. He yanked the freezer lid open and was greeted with the sight of Isaac Lahey, shielding his red-rimmed eyes from the light and smelling of terror and panic.

He extended a hand to the beta, who took it, with a look of wonder on his face, as though he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. Isaac stepped out of the freezer, shaking, nail beds bloody, curls matted with sweat and blood and face still wet with tears. He collapsed, holding onto the omega for dear life, and Stiles held him tightly, rubbed his back and pulled him up. Stiles kept an arm around his shoulders for support and led him to the gaping group at the stairs. Mr. Lahey shouted something unintelligible at him, but Stiles and Isaac walked right past. Scott and Derek flanked them as Stiles took Isaac upstairs and told him to pack a bag.

 

 

Isaac was staying at Allison’s place for the time being. Stiles knew he had rescued Isaac and was responsible for him but he would rather not bring Isaac home to another house with an alpha with temper issues. Chris had taken one look at Isaac, clapped him on the shoulder and said “We’ve got a spare room, son” with a twinkle in his eye. Staying with other betas for a while would help him to move past the inevitable trauma, but Stiles had the feeling that Argent had seen something of himself in the poor guy.

Isaac was grateful, that much was clear, but he wasn’t aware of anything to do with a secret society. When he had been told – in the school canteen over lunch, which he now joined them for – about the Lambda, he had huffed and said, “Sounds about right”. Chris had photographed the charter and returned it to Deucalion’s apartment, but they still hadn’t acted on the other, equally pressing concern: Peter.

Because while Derek knew that Peter occasionally got up to some shady shit, this was a whole new level of shady and a whole new pile of shit. This was horrible and harmful and when he got the chance, Peter was gonna get what was coming to him.

When Peter was actually at home. Which he hadn’t been lately, at least not at the same time as Derek.

Allison had tried to convince Derek that the smart way to go about this wasn’t to immediately rip Peter’s head off, but to _ask him._ Maybe they could get information out of him, find out exactly why the Lambda wanted to hurt an innocent boy and actually stop them, but Derek wasn’t buying it. He wanted Peter to suffer for what he’d done to Stiles and he wanted it _now._

With Stiles’s help Chris had managed to access a chat room that the Lambda used to communicate. Chris had been monitoring it for some time but had hovered, not wanting to expose himself. He and Stiles had figured out how to download the chat logs, which they could only do a day after the messages had been sent, but it was helpful nonetheless. They printed out everything, right back to the oldest messages they could get to, which were from three months ago, right after they’d done the last security sweep.

“How did you guys do all this?” Scott had been bewildered. “Why would the chat records be around for anyone to find?”

“They’re not,” Chris replied, “They’re on the dark web. You can only access the chat if you have Tor, and then some.”

Scott frowned. “What’s Tor?”

Allison grinned at him. “Exactly.”

Everyone had usernames, so they couldn’t tell who was writing what. There was one person, who called himself lycaon62, who appeared to be the leader and approved the ideas that were presented, giving them a time frame, and occasionally reprimanded other members of the group, but everything was done via username. They knew that Lycaon was the myth of the origin of their inner wolves, and that Lycaon had generally been considered the alpha of alphas, causing Chris to roll his eyes and mutter “Posturing”, but that didn’t help them much.

After spending several afternoons trawling through the records, Stiles and Chris announced to the others that they’d found something important.

“There’s talk about a Hunt.” Chris explained. “We don’t know anything about it yet, but it’s been planned for a while. There are references to a previous one, too, so this is probably routine for them. It’s set to take place on the next full moon and there are a lot of preparations for it.”

“The next full moon…” Scott frowned. “That’s Friday.”

“What kind of preparations?” Derek asked.

“We don’t know that.” Stiles admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “We don’t know much. All we know is that they’re planning this thing, it’s called the Hunt, it’s a tradition and helping to prepare for it has been divided up into jobs for different people.”

“What does it mean?” Isaac looked up at Chris.

Argent sighed. “We think they might be hunting for betas and omegas. People who aren’t alphas, doing things that aren’t traditionally acceptable. You know how some _really_ conservative assholes think that omegas and betas only belong at home and stuff, right? They’ll go around, beating people up and asserting dominance. What we need to do is try and get everyone to stay inside and at home on Friday night.”

“How?” Derek’s brain was ticking with ideas but he had a feeling that Stiles already had one or six.

“We’re gonna call in bomb threats,” Stiles fiddled absently with a pencil, “In the most densely visited areas. The only people out will be cops and they have guns.”

“Start a fire downtown.” Isaac suggested. At the looks of shock he received, he elaborated. “Not a big one. Just enough to get all the evacuation going, the fire department called, all that stuff.”

Chris nodded. “Good idea. We’re going to try and hijack the radio, make a fake hurricane warning. All of these things combined should be enough to get people to stay at home and put the cops on high alert. I can’t directly tell them something’s up because they don’t trust me, but if we can get people out of the town and into their houses, Beacon Hills will be a lot safer. We think they’re just out to terrorize the general beta and omega populace, so if we empty the town, we’re on the right track.”

Allison looked up at her father. “How are we going to accomplish all of this in two days?”

 

 

 

The answer, to no-one’s surprise, was to skip school.

Isaac and Allison called in sick. Derek spun the school secretary some story about open house at a university out of state that he was attending, and Scott and Stiles did what they usually did, which was to just not show up. Chris didn’t give them any crap about ditching school, which they were grateful for. Melissa was going to be annoyed enough for all of them, but Stiles was counting on his dad not noticing anything that actually went on with him lately, which saddened him more than it should.

Scott and Allison took over the task of finding out how to pull a successful bomb threat. It all had to be done through a heavily encrypted server that Chris had set up, because googling bombs generally got people put on FBI watchlists, and as Chris explained tiredly, “I _just_ got my name removed”. Isaac worked on setting the fire downtown, which Erica and Boyd would help him with when the time came. Derek and Stiles dealt with the hurricane warning and how to get into the local radio stations, while Chris took out a map of Beacon Hills and tried to patch everything together.

In the end their little plan had extended itself quite significantly. The entire town needed to be clear, so the bomb threats would be placed very specifically. Isaac’s fire would triple the police presence, since they would connect the fire with the bomb threats and think an actual bomb had gone off, so half the city would be required to stay home. Nobody went to school on a Friday night, so that one was as clear as it would get. The only major weak spot was the hospital.

“How are we going to evacuate the hospital?” Derek had said incredulously. “They won’t fall for a fake hurricane warning. They get all their intel from the authorities.”

“We don’t need to.” Isaac frowned, deep in thought. “They’re old-fashioned, right? Alphas who want to rule the world again.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Going after random betas and omegas, that – that has a purpose. It shows them who’s the boss. But sick people? Where’s the benefit? They don’t care about the dying, they want to show the world that they’re strong. You don’t do that by beating up cripples.”

Chris nodded in approval. He was warming to the curly-haired beta. “Isaac’s right. Besides, they can’t just attack the hospital with no-one knowing. The cops will show and they’ll get arrested. No, it’s individuals, normal people out on the street we need to worry about.”

When the plan was ready to go and everyone had criticized every inch of it that could be picked apart had been, they went home. Stiles stayed over at Scott’s house since his dad was working another double shift and he did not want to be home alone. They ate and rested and gathered their strength. They didn’t know what was coming tomorrow, but it was going to be bad.


	20. Spectacularly Bad Timing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright here we go, this is where shit begins to get real

Friday dawned with a handful of scattered clouds in the sky. Scott, Stiles and Derek had decided to go to school to deflect suspicion – a bunch of teenagers skipping school for two days just prior to a ton of anonymous bomb threats was a little doubtful, but Isaac and Allison stayed on the ‘sick’ track to get everything ready. All the preparations were made and they were ready to go right after school. Three o’clock couldn’t come fast enough.

The three of them sat with Erica and Boyd at lunch. They didn’t dare to go over the plan here in case someone heard them, so they forced themselves to be normal and talk about chemistry and history and English. Erica and Boyd sneaked off to some dark corner after twenty minutes of slightly stunted conversation while Derek, Scott and Stiles sat in amiable quiet.

Eventually, Scott put his fork down and asked Stiles something that seemed to have been bothering him. “Hey, man, I’m curious – it’s not because I’m judging you, you know that – but there’s these rumours –”

Stiles frowned. “Rumours? Scott, I told you I was bi, like, years ago.”

Scott gave him a look that said ‘I’m done with your shit’ before rephrasing his question. Derek got the feeling that it was a facial expression Scott used around Stiles a lot. “Jackson said he found you and Derek in a bathroom stall and you were, uh –”

Stiles sputtered with laughter. “Scott, that was ages ago. How long have you been wanting to ask me that?”

Scott’s eyes flicked over to Derek, who had a small smile of amusement playing on his lips. He liked it when Stiles poked fun at Scott, but the ferocity with which Jackson had spread those rumours was downright funny. It was like the sports freak was deliberately trying to get under his skin, which didn’t really make much sense. Revenge, maybe? “Hey, man, I’m cool with you dating dudes. You know that. I just figured you would’ve told me if you started banging someone.”

Stiles patted Scott on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Scottie. If and when I start doing dudes I’ll give you a full play-by-play.”

Scott grimaced at the prospect and Derek almost spat out some of his drink from laughing so hard.

 

 

The hurricane warning had been broadcast and now, hopefully, people would begin to take notice. It was supposed to keep hikers and joggers out of the woods, but also just in general to deter people from going out. Fortunately it was autumn and not a delightful midsummer day, so people wouldn’t be clamouring to be out for long walks, but still. The Lambda wouldn’t bust into someone’s house, that was a whole new level of illegal.

Isaac and Allison had made three dummy bombs, suspicious-looking briefcases with a loudly ticking clock inside. The bomb squad would recognize a fake very quickly, but they were designed with a spring mechanism, so if an expert had a look at them he’d know something was waiting to jump up inside when he opened it. He just wouldn’t know that it was a large, smooth stone they’d added to give the case some weight, but it would buy them some extra time.

Placing the cases while avoiding detection by security camera was the tricky part. Argent’s car was too recognizable to go straight through town but in the end they planned a route where they avoided every known camera and were able to leave the briefcases. In a half hour or so, when people began to go out for dinner, they’d call in the threat and police would swarm. When the cops were just beginning to clear out they would call in the next one. And so on, until it was time for Isaac’s little fire to start. The plan was good. It would work.

Isaac, Erica, Boyd, Scott, Allison and Chris were out monitoring their plan. Erica, Boyd and Isaac were sitting innocently in a Chinese restaurant opposite to where they would be starting the fire. Scott and Allison were on a romantic walk through town, scanning the whole area. It was quieter than usual, which must mean something was working. The police had set up a cordon around the first briefcase, which Chris was watching. Sooner or later, he would phone up anonymously and tell them about the second one. The first cordon had been discreet, as if not to disrupt people, but once they got the call about the second one the cops would freak and hopefully start a massive evacuation.

Derek and Stiles were at Stiles’s house. They kept in touch with the others via phone, but Stiles didn’t need to ask why Derek hadn’t gone with them, or why they had all agreed he should stay home. He was an omega and Derek was here to protect him in case alphas came barrelling through the door. He had argued that alphas wouldn’t come breaking his door down but he was already a target, that much Ennis had proven. The others were right but regardless, there was no reasoning with Argent, Scott and Derek on that front.

Stiles wasn’t sure what use the two of them would be if the entire Lambda showed up, but the odds of that were small. There were dozens of other omegas in Beacon Hills, it wasn’t a small town, and Stiles’s father was the Sheriff. If _he_ was going to victimize a random omega, it wouldn’t be the Sheriff’s kid. He eyed the metal baseball bat lying innocently on the table.

Stiles got up to stretch his legs. This whole plan thing was having some kind of effect on him; maybe it was just the nerves. He felt kind of woozy, but most of all he was totally overheating. He brushed away sweat that beaded on his forehead impatiently.

Derek frowned at him from where he sat at the dining table. “Stiles. Are you okay?”

Stiles turned around too fast and felt a momentary rush in his head. When it had calmed down, he gulped and spoke. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

Derek just kept staring. “I can smell your discomfort from over here.”

Stiles let out a whoosh of air. He was having a hard time keeping the clamp on his emotions right now and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t bother him. “Sorry. Just feel kind of sick.”

Derek closed the book he was reading and laid it on the table. “Don’t apologize, Stiles. Sick how?”

Stiles splashed some cold water on his face in the kitchen but it did nothing to temper his blood boiling. “Really hot. And nauseous. And my stomach sorta hurts.”

Derek walked over to him and felt his temperature. “Yeah, you’re burning up. Come on, let’s get you upstairs. You can take a nap.”

Stiles shot him an incredulous look. “There’s a pack of insane alphas running around looking to victimize people like me and my friends are involved in a crazy plan to stop them. I’m not taking a _nap._ ”

“A plan which you can’t help with,” Derek reminded him, and began to walk him upstairs by the shoulder. “And I’m right down here. Nobody gets in without me hearing it. Or you, you have better hearing. If something happens I’ll wake you up.”

By this point Stiles had been pushed all the way up the stairs and was halfway to his bedroom. He grumbled, yawned, and shrugged his way into his room. Derek let him go to deal with his fever alone, and headed downstairs.

The book he had found was interesting – it was a book on human psychology from the library, and was open on a chapter on hierarchal relations. Presumably Stiles had been reading up on the psychology behind the genders and that was where he was getting some of his info.

He’d been reading the section on alphas and frowning when he saw himself in the descriptions for about half an hour when the dizzyingly heady scent of arousal drifted downstairs.

Derek resisted the urge to snap the book shut and continued his reading. So Stiles had decided that a good way to deal with his illness was to jerk off – that was okay. He was sick, he didn’t have control over the scent, and he was being quiet enough about it that Derek couldn’t hear anything unless he really focused, which he was _not_ going to do. That was just too creepy. The smell was strong but Derek ignored it, took breaths through his mouth instead, and tried to focus on the words on the page. They wriggled around, not wanting to be read, and the only thing his brain could focus on was that incredibly enticing scent, but he rolled his eyes and stayed where he was.

Half an hour passed and the scent _still_ hadn’t faded, in fact Stiles seemed to be pumping it out in waves. Derek began to wonder if something was actually really wrong with Stiles when a new scent overwhelmed him.

The smell was entirely unfamiliar but it made Derek water at the mouth. His alpha was frantic, itching to be released, and Derek started feeling something he’d never felt before. The urge to mate and claim. It yanked at him, full moon intensifying it, and he fought to keep his eyes their usual colour and his teeth their usual length. He could _not_ lose control of his alpha now, this was literally the worst timing ever and he would be having _serious_ words with his alpha when they got home. Jesus Christ.

“Stiles!” He yelled up the stairs, knowing that Stiles could hear him well enough, even if Derek was blocking a little of his own hearing out of courtesy, “I don’t know what you’re doing but stop it! Someone’s gonna catch the scent!”

There was no reply, but Derek’s phone buzzed so he grabbed it from his pocket. A distraction would be great right now. Apparently the scent went straight to his dick as well as his alpha and things were not looking too awesome. “Scott?” He spoke to the receiver.

“Yeah, hey, man. It’s pretty quiet downtown. Argent’s just called in the second bomb threat, but it’s going to plan. We’re being evacuated right now. How’s everything? How’s Stiles?”

“He’s, uh…” Derek shot the stairs a look. “He’s okay. He got a fever so he went upstairs. You want me to put him on?” He asked the question out of politeness but dread was pooling in his chest. He really did _not_ want to interrupt whatever was going on upstairs.

That was a lie. He did. He wanted to interrupt, hell, he wanted to help. But he wasn’t going to do that, no, he wasn’t going to be some asshole alpha who let pheromones rule his head, he was going to go up there and be nice and polite to Stiles because it wasn’t the omega’s fault that he was right now the scent equivalent of an addict’s next hit.

“Yeah, do that. He’s not answering his phone.”

Derek trudged upstairs slowly and deliberately, making his presence loud and known to the entire house. He hoped that Stiles would hear him and finish up in the time it took him to get upstairs. He knocked hesitantly on the door and frowned when he received no answer. “Stiles?”

He put his ear to the door and listened. There was no heartbeat inside, indeed, he could hear no heartbeat in the entire house. He shoved the door open and swore. The window was wide open, a breeze blowing through, and there was no sign of Stiles.

“Scott, he’s not here. He’s gone out the window, or someone’s taken him.”

Scott also swore down the line. Derek heard him relay the message to Allison and let out a frustrated yell. She took the phone, thinking more calmly than her boyfriend. “Okay. If there was a struggle you would have heard it. Did you say he was sick? Something must be messing with his head. He’s probably just really confused and needed air. The full moon could be making him weird.”

Derek’s brain was reeling. “Sure, but where would he go?”

Allison consulted Scott, who replied, after a noise that sounded like a fist hitting a brick wall. “There’s a giant tree trunk in the woods. It would take him maybe an hour to get to from home, so he can’t have gotten far.”

“A tree trunk in the woods,” Derek repeated, approaching the window and leaning out of it. “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘to hide a tree, use a forest’?”

“Get on his scent. Follow it, okay? We’ll head out to the tree now, we’ll be there as soon as we can. My dad and Isaac and the others will keep on the plan but we _need_ to find Stiles. Scott says he does dumb stuff when he’s confused.”

Derek dimly remembered the day he had first spoken to Stiles, when he had found him, bloody and freezing, lying in the woods. It seemed like an age ago. Since then so much had happened – Stiles had presented, they’d grown closer, and now Derek was having a tough time imagining life before him.

“Okay. I’ll call you if anything happens.”

He hung up on Allison and jumped out of the window.


	21. The Full Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, one slightly too long chapter, but it was either too long or too short, so...  
> shit's getting intense, yo

Stiles’s scent was easy to follow, and that bothered Derek. If he could find it, surely the Lambda could, too; the smell of fertile and aroused omega had to be some kind of beacon for them. The scent wasn’t entirely fresh, which meant Stiles had sneaked out of the house a little while ago, but what bothered Derek more was what could be wrong with Stiles.

While he understood that sometimes people got horny when they got sick, this seemed like too much of a coincidence. Stiles’s wooziness, his raised temperature, the pain in his scent-trail and the way that the suppressants weren’t blocking the smell. Stiles had taken his suppressant this morning. Derek had been present and had watched him do it.

Derek didn’t know much about omegas, only eighth-grade biology and the research he’d done, but he knew that an omega’s heat came twice a year, starting with six months after the presentation. It hadn’t been nearly six months since Stiles presented, and regardless, there was a pre-heat scent, a warning. If this was a heat, it was far too sudden to be natural.

As though it had been synthetically induced.

Derek actually punched himself and swore. If their ragtag band of friends could break into Deucalion’s apartment, who was to say the Lambda couldn’t get into Stiles’s house? All they would have to do was spike Stiles’s food.

He thought back to what Stiles had eaten that day. Lunch at school, then at his home, cherry Coke and a Pop-Tart. He drank almost a pint of cherry Coke each day, everyone knew that. It wouldn’t be hard for a psychopathic alpha to dissolve a tablet in there. And someone slipping Stiles a heat inducer – drugging the _Sheriff’s kid_ – was someone who was calculating, planning, constantly scheming. Like an experienced group of elitist assholes.

Derek whipped his phone out and called Scott. The other boy picked up on the first ring. “Scott, listen. Stiles is going into heat, he’s running around in the woods on his own and he’s smelling like I don’t know what. I don’t think the alphas are just going around beating up random people.”

Scott was dumbstruck on the other end. “The Hunt. They’ve induced a heat and now –”

Derek looked upwards. The moon hung full and pearly in the sky, and it sang to him, to his alpha. If a wolf was going to let his animal side out, now was the time. At this time of month there was the least amount of self-control, and the strongest wolf when it was allowed to show itself. “Now the Hunt begins.”

“Let me call you back.”

While Scott got on the phone with Argent and told him to drop everything _now,_ Derek decided a better way to get information was to phone someone in the know. Like Peter.

“Oh, hey, Derek. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”

“Where are you right now?” It came out more forcefully than Derek had intended. He wanted answers and he wanted them _now_ but if Peter thought Derek was interfering with the Hunt he might not be so forthcoming.

Peter didn’t seem to care. “I’m in the woods, Derek. Why?”

“The woods?” Fear struck an icy finger through Derek’s spine. “What’re you doing in the woods?”

“Oh, come on, Derek.” Peter’s tone was dismissive. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

Derek clutched his phone, frozen in fear. He wasn’t capable of replying.

“There’s an omega in heat running around all alone,” Peter purred, “And the Hunt is on.”

 

 

 

Derek was running at full pelt through the forest, following Stiles’s scent with a single-minded focus.

He knew that Scott had alerted Argent, and that they were both on their way, but the question was whether they would get there in time. Argent had told Isaac, Boyd and Allison very firmly that as betas, he was not letting them anywhere near the woods tonight. They wanted to help Stiles but having betas running around the forest might complicate the rescue mission, so they had reluctantly agreed to stay back. They were at Stiles’s house, waiting for him in case he came back, and Erica had stayed with them rather than join the other alphas on the hunt for the Lambda in case any of the bigots showed up there. It was at this point that Derek kind of wished he had more friends he could call on, but he didn’t, and there was no way he was involving Laura in any of this.

And Chris might have been a beta but he had an arsenal the size of Texas and years of training. It was the three of them and an incapacitated Stiles against a small horde of powerful alphas, including his own uncle, so their only hope was to find Stiles first and get the hell out of dodge. They had alerted the law enforcement that there was an omega in a synthetically induced heat wandering around in the woods, but it turned out that pretty much the entire Sheriff’s department was dealing with a suspicious briefcase across town, the second that night, and Derek groaned inwardly.

He wasn’t sure if he was getting closer or if Stiles was getting worse, but the heat scent was cloying, now, and he felt his teeth emerge and his eyes burn and he roared out loud, pleading for the moon to hold off on its pull over him. He couldn’t, he couldn’t do this to Stiles. He had to focus, tame the alpha, think of Stiles.

_Think of Stiles. Not the omega._

And that, Derek found, was the key; focusing on Stiles, his friend Stiles, and the way he laughed and the face he made when he was feeling especially sarcastic and the way he just didn’t care what people thought. He thought about freckles scattered across milky skin and amber eyes and that little identifying whiff that just smelled like _home_ and _good_ and _right_ and he thought about how relieved he was going to be when Stiles was safe in his arms as he sprinted his way through the woods _._ He felt his emotions change, from overprotective alpha to something softer, something sweeter.

And he knew then and there that his feelings for Stiles were more than friendly.

It was those feelings that spurred him on as he crashed through the undergrowth. His shirt snagged and ripped on every branch that stuck out but he didn’t care. Derek raced through the woods not noticing the thorns that pricked his skin or the roots that threatened to trip him. He could smell where Stiles had walked around a small ravine and when Derek came to it, he leaped right over, uncaring of everything in the world except finding Stiles and getting him safe. The scent was calling to his alpha but his feelings for Stiles were more powerful than those primal urges and they kept him safe.

They would keep Stiles safe.

And when Derek found Stiles curled into the foetal position atop a massive tree trunk, pale and shivering but definitely breathing, something in his chest fluttered and settled.

 

 

 

He skirted around the tree and approached Stiles so the omega could see him coming, but the other boy’s face was screwed up and buried in his arms. Derek walked up to him slowly and calmly after having phoned the others, and put a hand on Stiles’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he said gently. “Stiles. It’s Derek.”

Stiles looked up, eyes burning blue and smelling strongly of what Derek now knew to be heat scent. It was mouth-watering, his alpha roaring commands, but right now his alpha wasn’t the one calling the shots. Derek felt very much in control and he smiled reassuringly at Stiles.

“Listen. We need to get you home, okay? As fast as we can?”

Stiles nodded and let out a whimper.

“Are you in pain?”

Stiles nodded again. “It hurts.”

Derek grimaced empathetically. He had read that omegas often experienced pain on top of the overwhelming horniness, pain that could only be alleviated by an alpha’s knot, but there wasn’t anything to do about it now. It was their body’s way of punishing them for not taking advantage of their time of fertility, and it was pretty awful, and had been used as an excuse by dickhead alphas time and time again. Stiles was hazy and not entirely lucid and they had to get him out of there _now._

Derek slid one arm under Stiles’s knees and another under his shoulders, picking him up bridal style and was suddenly reminded of another time he had done this, when Stiles had been in pain right before presenting, and when he’d first met him in the woods. He smiled down at Stiles and made to leave back towards the way he had come when he heard footsteps behind him.

He turned around and watched fearfully as a group of alphas appeared, walking over the bluff.

There were a few he didn’t know, some of whom looked his age, some older. Deucalion was in the middle, flanked by Ennis and a woman with bare feet and long, clawed toes. Beside her was Isaac’s father, but on Ennis’s other side smirked a very familiar face. Derek suppressed a growl as Peter gave him a little finger wave. There were ten of them, and Derek felt vulnerable and vastly outnumbered.

They had stopped and seemed content to address him from thirty yards away at the top of the little incline. He wondered if he could outrun them while still carrying Stiles but his odds weren’t looking great. All of them were wearing red eyes, and all of them would have alpha strength and speed enhanced by the full moon, whereas Derek’s was good but not nearly on the same level as a totally unleashed alpha.

“Derek!” Peter grinned, revealing extended canines and steepling his fingers to show claws. “Wasn’t sure if we’d see you today.”

The older one in the middle – Deucalion – turned to Peter. “You know this one?”

Peter smiled respectfully. Derek wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that look on his uncle before. “He’s my nephew.”

“Well, he’s in the way.” The woman trained her eyes on him and bared her teeth.

“Now, Kali,” Deucalion cautioned, “We’re here for a reason.” He addressed Derek. “Hand the omega over and this doesn’t have to come to a fight.”

Derek clutched Stiles, who had begun to whine from the pain, tighter into his chest and stared the alphas down. He didn’t care what they did to him but over his dead body would he let them take Stiles.

“He always was overdramatic,” Peter sighed as if by way of apology, “I’m sure that he thinks because he found it he has the right.” Derek felt slightly sick to his stomach when he heard his uncle refer to Stiles as an ‘it’. Like he wasn’t even a person. A person currently trying to claw his shirt off, but being half out of his mind, not entirely successful.

“No,” Deucalion murmured, “Look at his eyes. The scent that omega is giving off would be enough to cause almost any alpha to lose control, but your nephew’s not even showing teeth. There’s something else going on here.”

Derek didn’t reply, just kept combing over them all with his gaze, trying to analyse his way to a weakness. If they split up to chase him he might be able to outrun one or two of them – Lahey was kind of old – but at the moment the best plan he had was to stall and pray that Argent arrived with lots of guns.

“That omega,” Lahey pointed an accusatory finger at Stiles, “Was the one who took my son away.”

“You tortured your son.” Derek retorted.

“He deserved it,” Lahey continued, narrowing his eyes at Derek. “He was weak, a beta like his mother. You helped him, too, I remember you, you’re the one who held me back while I had to watch an omega walk out of my house with my son.”

“If you let this turn personal you forfeit the Hunt,” Deucalion reprimanded Lahey mildly. “Do you understand?”

Lahey replied with a meek “I understand” but he continued to glare in Derek’s direction.

Deucalion tutted. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What will we do about this?”

Derek shifted his weight a little. “Why did you leave heat inducers in his locker?”

Deucalion’s eyebrows shot up briefly before returning to their usual position. “To teach the omega its place.”

Derek’s expression turned horrified and Deucalion rolled his eyes.

“The boy in your arms is extremely curious. That much Ennis could attest to. Leaving them for the omega to find was the simplest way of demonstrating the truth.”

“And what truth is that?” Derek had a feeling he knew but he asked anyway, clenching his jaw and standing firm.

“That they’re below us,” Kali smiled as though it were all obvious and took a few steps in his direction. Derek responded by backing up. “Derek, it gives off a smell that’s designed to attract alphas. That omega is asking for whatever happens to it when it smells that good.”

“He’s a person and his name is Stiles,” Derek bellowed at her. “And he doesn’t ask for assholes like you to exist. He’s suffered enough.”

“He’s suffering more right now,” Deucalion pointed out. “Heats are painful, although I’m sure you can already tell. He wants any knot he can get his hands on. Male, female, it doesn’t matter.”

“He’s heat-addled,” Derek gritted his teeth, “He can’t consent right now because his mind’s not in the right place.”

Peter snorted. “Consent? Derek, if he was totally sane, look at him.” Peter gestured at the way that Stiles was rubbing his nose along the planes of Derek’s chest. “You think he’s going to say no?”

Derek’s jaw clenched and he stared down at Stiles before realizing that he had stopped squirming and was focusing. Stiles tilted his head to clear his ears and Derek stopped the pulse of relief from going too far. He didn’t want the alphas to smell what Stiles could already hear. Someone else was coming. “It doesn’t matter,” Derek began to step backwards slowly, “What you think he would say. What matters is he doesn’t want you. And you can’t just incite an omega heat and use it to hurt him. Your little fantasies about alphas being better than everyone else are wrong and you can fucking choke.”

By now the alphas could hear the clattering of people entering the clearing and Derek could see the restlessness grow among them.

Chris Argent yelled somewhere, not too far away. “GO!”

That was all Derek needed. He took off, sprinting as fast as his legs would carry him, ignoring the alphas that came running after him and the deafening gunfire. He followed the path he’d made earlier back to Stiles’s house, but when it came to crossing the little ravine he hesitated.

He could hear someone hot on his heels – Kali, from the sounds of it – and he didn’t have the time to go around the ravine, he was going to have to go over, but was doubtful of his ability to jump across while holding Stiles.

He turned around and saw that he was right, Kali was indeed not far off. He couldn’t stop and fight her – he might win, probably not, but he’d have to put Stiles down and leave him vulnerable, which wasn’t an option. Instead, Derek did the only thing he could think of as he approached the ravine. He picked up speed.

A few yards before the ground dropped away into nothing, Derek gathered all his strength and allowed a little of his alpha to come to the surface. Just enough to let out a rumble and to throw Stiles, literally throw him high over the ravine with more force than Derek could launch himself. When Derek came up to the end of the ground half a second later, he jumped for all he was worth. He sailed through the air, catching up to Stiles, seizing hold of Stiles’s arm and using his own momentum to pull them both over to the other side. They fell to the ground, Derek slightly on top of the other boy, but didn’t waste a second. Derek leaned down and grabbed hold, slinging Stiles over his shoulder in what Derek hoped was a slightly more manoeuvrable fireman’s lift.

He spared a glance for Kali as he took off again. She stood on the other side of the ravine, snarling, and began to take the longer way by going around instead of over. If Derek hadn’t jumped the ravine before he would definitely have doubted his ability to do it, but his fear made him strong and it lent his feet wings as he continued on his mad dash through the woods.

It felt like an eternity later when Stiles’s house came into view, or maybe that was because Derek had been expecting to be accosted by alphas every step of the way. He had managed to lose Kali but he had no idea how the others were doing.

He let himself into the house, panting heavily, scaring the life out of the others who were huddled there. Erica met his eyes.

“Go!” He barked hoarsely. She nodded and let herself out, running full pelt into the night, and Isaac slammed the door shut.

“Is he okay?”

Derek nodded and brushed past him, taking Stiles upstairs to his room. He laid Stiles down on the bed and covered him with a blanket while Isaac and Allison watched. Allison went to close the window and the three of them adopted protective positions around the room. Boyd called the cops and watched downstairs, Derek sat next to Stiles on a small chair, Isaac sat himself on the window ledge and Allison leaned against the door.

When Derek had caught his breath he began to explain what had happened. Isaac’s look was grim when he talked about Mr. Lahey but Derek didn’t hold back. It was important that everyone knew the truth about the night’s horrors and he couldn’t afford to spare Isaac’s feelings.

“How long do heats usually last?” Allison asked quietly. She was watching Stiles, who alternated between sweating, shivering, groaning in pain and trying to hide an occasional boner. Maybe it worked on Isaac and Allison, but Derek could smell it. It didn’t bother him too much. As long as Stiles was far away from the Lambda.

“Normally a week,” Derek grimaced in reply, “But this one’s different. There’s no slow start or pre-heat. I’m thinking this one’s gonna be shorter, but I don’t know.”

When Stiles felt cold Derek extended a hand, which Stiles laid across his cheek and sighed in contentment. He pretended not to see the looks Isaac and Allison were giving him and instead chalked it up to fatigue. He cared about Stiles and he wasn’t going to hide it.

A few hours later, Argent rang Allison. She got such a fright she almost dropped the phone. “Are you all okay?”

“We’re fine!” Scott replied, and they could hear the smile in his voice. “We’re all okay.”

Derek let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“Thanks for sending Erica. She was really helpful. Scary.” They heard a muffled cackle from Erica. “Law enforcement arrived,” Chris told them, “And they knew what was goin’ on. I don’t know how, but somebody connected the bomb threats to this, so now the Sheriff’s department is investigating them for distracting the cops while they all induced a heat in an unwilling omega. It’s not looking good for them.”

“Did you punch my dad?” Isaac shouted from the window spot, a smile on his face.

Argent laughed. “Kid, somebody shot your dad. A deputy. Dark hair, ex-bomb squad, did a tour in Afghanistan. Cool guy. Said he knew Derek.” Derek grinned. Parrish was a godsend. “Your dad’s in the hospital with a flesh wound. It’s serious but not life threatening.”

Isaac let out something that could only be described as a whoop and despite himself Derek laughed.

Argent cleared his throat. “Derek, your uncle…”

He didn’t have to steel himself. When Peter had gone out to hurt innocents he was pretty much dead to Derek. “What?”

Argent’s tone was flat, and not just because of the connection. “He’s been badly injured. And there’s an armed cop outside his door 24/7. When he does recover, he’ll be taken into custody.”

Allison looked over at him worriedly, but Derek’s only concern was for Stiles. “What about the others?”

“Eight of them were taken in but two managed to get away. It’s okay, I sent the cops the photo of the charter. They’ll find them and they’ll be put away.”

Something in Derek’s head snarled _they’d better be_ but he didn’t voice it. 

“This doesn’t mean that the streets are safe for Stiles. There are still sympathizers out there, and people with backwards opinions. He needs to stay on the medication and he needs to stay safe. And that goes for all of you.”

As if Derek was going to let someone hurt Stiles any more.


	22. I Dare You

Two days later Stiles was feeling fully recovered. The after-effects of the synthetic heat had stretched on through the weekend, but by Sunday Stiles was feeling much better. His stomach hurt and he was still kind of horny. It was nowhere near the blinding need he had felt during the heat, but he was trying not to think about that and just get on with his life.

That heat would not be the same as the real one, that much he knew. But he felt like he’d had something stolen from him by the alphas, something he couldn’t really put his finger on. He shrugged it off and ignored it, since there wasn’t much else to be done, but it lingered in the back of his mind, bugging him.

His dad had been working on the case since Friday night, but Stiles hadn’t been at home alone. Scott had come by and said hi, but Derek had actually refused to leave him. He had said something about not leaving Stiles alone in the house with no alpha, but Stiles was getting kind of weirded out by.

They’d eaten breakfast, done some homework and were taking a break. Stiles sat on his bed up against the wall while Derek sat at the foot of it.

“Hey, Derek.” Stiles began awkwardly. His cheeks felt like they were burning.

Derek quirked an eyebrow without breaking eye contact with his phone. “Hey, Stiles.” He was obviously expecting another weird question, like why did bottled water have an expiration date or if he’d ever owned a pet rock or something, which was fair enough considering how Stiles’s mind jumped from topic to topic sometimes.

Stiles swallowed somewhat nervously. “I never did say thanks.”

Derek looked him in the eye and his gaze softened. “Stiles, you don’t need to thank me.”

“No, I do.” Stiles set his jaw. “Derek, you saved my ass. Totally and completely. When I jumped out the window I don’t know what I was thinking but you – you made everything okay. So. Thank you for that.”

Derek waved a hand. “Stiles, your brain was moon- and heat-addled. And you were burning up. I just followed you.”

“And fought off half a pack of alphas,” Stiles reminded him, “And apparently threw me over a ravine – god, I wish someone had filmed that – and, like, carried me all the way home.”

Derek smiled. “It’s not the first time I’ve carried you home.”

They laughed at that, but Stiles grew serious again, kneading his fingers together.  “My – my scent. It affected every other alpha, Scott told me that. All the Lambda, and him and Erica too. But it didn’t affect you?”

Derek avoided his gaze. “I was able to concentrate.”

Stiles frowned. “How? Can you teach me?”

Derek tapped his foot and refused to look at Stiles. He inspected the paintwork, fiddled with his phone, glanced over at the door, gaze finally ending in his own lap. “I grounded myself in my other feelings about you. There’s the alpha and then there’s the human side, you know. I held on to the human side. I could use a little alpha strength but I wasn’t sure I’d have control if I gave in.” He looked at the expression that crossed Stiles’s face and Derek’s heart immediately sank. He wasn’t one of those uncontrollable scent-crazed alphas but now because of a stupid night and a stupid wrongly placed word, Stiles was going to think he was as bad as the rest of them.

And it _hurt._

Stiles kept looking at him intently, and Derek shied away from the prying gaze. “What other feelings?”

Derek scratched his hair and stared around the room, but Stiles promptly lurched himself forward and sat right up in Derek’s personal space. Derek could feel Stiles’s body heat and, distantly, the other boy’s breath on his jaw and he stayed perfectly still.

“I can’t help how I feel about you,” Derek replied, barely above a whisper. He kept eye contact, because he was about to spill his guts and he was only going to do it once. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? It’s not just because you’re an omega. It’s just you, you know? You’re amazing, Stiles, you’re beautiful and you’re incredible and I just really care about you. And if you don’t want to be my friend then I get it, because this is terrible timing for you, but if –” Derek sighed, refusing to let his voice break. He was preparing himself for the rejection he knew was coming and he kind of wanted to cry. At least it was said, and he wouldn’t have to wonder _what if, what if_ later down the line. “If you still want to be friends I won’t let my feelings mess anything up. I won’t make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable.” Stiles repeated. His expression was unreadable.

Derek looked at him and tried to ignore the beginnings of tears that were forming in his eyes. “I won’t, I promise.”

‘Uncomfortable’ seemed to be the last word on Stiles’s mind when he and did what he next did. He leaned forward, causing Derek’s eyes to widen in surprise, and kissed the alpha right on the lips.

Derek was surprised, as was Stiles himself, so it was a little clumsy initially, but neither of them cared. It was sweet and genuine and Derek felt like he could fly, like someone had attached wings to his insides and set them free. Stiles put a hand around his waist and pulled him closer, and one of Derek’s palms came up to caress Stiles’s cheek. Derek felt like his entire body was glowing, giddiness twisting his stomach into ropes.

When they broke the kiss Stiles laid his head against Derek’s shoulder and stretched out contentedly on the bed. Derek’s wolf felt soothed at Stiles’s close proximity, happy, joyous, peaceful, even. He fiddled with Stiles’s hair absently and when Stiles spoke in a low, musical hum it felt like Derek might actually explode.

“You don’t make me feel uncomfortable.”

Derek allowed himself to smile, show on his face how honestly happy he felt on the inside. It was a wide grin, before he remembered the thing with his teeth being kind of scary and shortened it again. It didn’t matter. Stiles was here.

Apparently it mattered to Stiles. The omega bolted upwards and narrowed his eyes. “Why do you do that?”

Nothing could ruin Derek’s good mood right now. “Do what?”

Stiles raised a finger and traced it over Derek’s bottom lip. Something started pounding in Derek’s chest and his head spun a little. “When you smile. You start smiling and then you stop again.”

Derek laughed and shrugged. “I’m told my full smile intimidates people. The teeth. I mean, I am an alpha, I guess. So I don’t. Smile all the way.”

“You should,” Stiles told him, pecking him lightly on the lips, and Derek was momentarily stunned, “You’re not intimidating. Not to me.”

And when Derek next smiled he didn’t pull it back.

 

 

 

Derek and Stiles had allowed their relationship to be known to the general populace.

They still met every morning at the lockers, but now they made out as well as Derek supplying Stiles with scent suppressants. Scott and the others had of course been totally supportive – Allison had actually whooped when Stiles had told her – and Laura, overworked as she was, had been thrilled. She had met Stiles and when Derek revealed that Stiles was the omega and he’d kept it quiet to keep him safe, she had thrown her arms around him and squealed in approval. She had mumbled things about him being sweet and brave and mom being proud that Derek began to tune out.

Being two guys dating wasn’t always easy, but they made it work. The first time someone had been a dick about it was in math class.

Matt Daehler had leaned over and smirked unpleasantly at Stiles. “Hey, Stiles. How’s it feel to be both a faggot _and_ a bitch?”

Matt Daehler was a beta who had kind of had something against Scott since he started dating Allison. He was a photography nerd with a nasty streak and no friends. Normally, Stiles’s heart went out to friendless individuals and he tried to look out for them, but there was an actual reason that Matt was alone. Allison told Stiles that his photography habit had gone too far and her dad had actually filed for a restraining order. But she didn’t tell Scott, because it was pointless, she wasn’t into Matt anyway, and Scott would just get mad. No, Matt was an asshole, but apparently he was an asshole with an extremely bad sense of timing.

Because while Stiles was ready with a snarky reply and Scott was pretty much already growling, Aiden sat in front of them, and he turned his head around to reveal red eyes, long teeth, and an angry expression. Aiden, who was generally an okay guy but also kind of a dick towards him. Aiden, who had an openly gay twin brother.

“Say faggot again, I dare you.” Aiden directed this at Matt. He used a little of the alpha tone, not enough to actually force Matt to do something but enough to make him violently uncomfortable.

Matt gulped visibly and sat back in his chair. Aiden let the alpha fade away again and gave Scott and Stiles a nod.

The two of them looked at each other in mild confusion before shrugging it off.

There were considerably less ‘omega bitch’ comments, and Stiles had a feeling that Derek had actually threatened to dismember people. Since the incident with Matt, people being rude about Derek and Stiles both being guys were very passive about it.

It turned out that Aiden having a gay twin and Jackson’s best friend Danny being gay –Danny happened to be the nicest and most well-liked person _ever,_ and for good reason – was enough to deter bullies. In some weird way it was also enough to mean that Jackson stopped acting like a dick and he and Lydia began to eat lunch with them. They were a motley assortment but it worked. Scott, Allison, Isaac, Jackson, Lydia, Danny, Ethan, Aiden, Stiles and Derek – it was awkward initially but not for long. Eventually Isaac started to bond with Jackson and Aiden over sports, and Lydia began to appreciate some of Derek’s sarcasm. Erica and Boyd dropped in when they weren’t fumbling around in the janitor’s closet and generally stopped to poke fun at Jackson.

It wasn’t that being openly bisexual had landed them a ton of friends overnight, but more that people had heard about what happened to Stiles and had sort of taken them under their wing. Jackson was violently opposed to pro-alpha sentiment, having lost both parents to it – a constant source of his niggling guilt and fear – and had sort of taken it upon himself to help Stiles out. That, and he was violently opposed to homophobes. It was a bit weird, but he was a cool enough guy when he wasn’t dickish and he was really trying.

“Hey, about the bathroom thing…” Jackson looked over at Stiles and Derek one sunny afternoon where they sat outside. “I’m sorry. I was a dick with all the rumours.”

Stiles accepted the apology graciously. Jackson had actually threatened Theo Raeken with a broken nose when Theo had hissed something derogatory at Derek during class. It wasn’t that Derek couldn’t stick up for himself or that he cared what Theo thought, but Jackson knew that showing solidarity would mean a lot less unpleasantness in general. Stiles knew that Jackson’s behaviour of late was his own way of apologizing, in the only real way he could, and he smelled only of sincerity. “It’s cool.” He grinned mischievously at Derek. “I guess we should give them something real to base rumours on?”

Derek’s brain actually froze and Jackson sputtered, almost spitting out half his food. Ethan started coughing and had to be hit on the back a few times. When Derek’s brain began to function again he laughed slightly nervously. He and Stiles had only been dating for a week, they hadn’t gotten that far. Not that he’d been thinking about it. At all. In the shower. Ever.

Now that he and Stiles were dating, he didn’t feel guilty about it. Much.

Danny smirked at Stiles conspiratorially and leaned over. In a stage-whisper that was meant to be low but was clearly loud enough for the entire table to hear, he said, “Hey Stiles. After lacrosse practice, nobody uses the boys’ locker room showers.”

Scott whined. “Danny! We change in there!”

Aiden rolled his eyes, Isaac snorted and Allison just laughed at her boyfriend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fluff!!! fluff fluff fluff


	23. We Can Totally Skip Class

Stiles arrived home that Friday, humming to himself lightly as he smiled, thinking about Derek. The alpha had been so incredibly good, so kind to him about everything. He was constantly checking on Stiles – not in an overbearing way that Stiles would have hated, but more sort of a _hey, a bunch of psychos tried to do unspeakable things to you, are you feeling okay today? Because we can totally skip class and go get pancakes_ type of way, which Stiles very much appreciated.

Because he was doing just fine, but not all the time.

His love life might be blissful, but not everything could be so peachy. A week or so after the drug-induced heat, Stiles had been sitting happily in English daydreaming about Derek’s pecs and how he’d caught a glimpse of a freckle there that he kind of wanted to put a hickey on, but he wasn’t sure if that would be too much, too soon, when his brain had abruptly changed the channel, which his brain was wont to do – it just usually involved flipping _to_ the outlines of Derek’s muscles and not _from_ them.

No, he’d started thinking about the other night and all the insanity, started combing through all the horror that he had firmly put in a box and labelled _to deal with later_ and tried to sort through how he felt about all of it.

And it had given him a panic attack of biblical proportions.

Scott had smelled it coming, because Scott had been around enough of his panic attacks when he was a kid to know, and had dragged him out the door and to the nurse’s office, ignoring Miss Blake’s protests. When he had been unable to calm Stiles down and Stiles whimpered something about alpha scent while there were tears streaming down his face, Scott had gone _oh shit_ and done the only thing he felt he could do, which was to back away and call Derek, who was sitting in the middle of social studies and answered the phone right then and fucking there.

Only Scott had been panicky and incredibly worried that his smell was the cause of Stiles’s panic attack so he had been kind of jumpy over the phone.

“Derek! It’s Stiles – you need to get to the sickbay, _now_ –”

“Scott! What’s going on?”

Scott hadn’t even registered the fear in Derek’s voice, he just stared over at his friend and helplessly watched him hyperventilate, the nurse doing nothing helpful. “ _Now!_ ”

Derek had not even stopped to grab his bag or books, he had shot up out of his seat, ignored the teacher’s angry yells and sprinted right down the corridor, testing the air for the scent of blood and ready to tear someone apart, only to arrive at the sickbay to see that Stiles was not dying and had not been grievously harmed.

He wasn’t doing great, either, but once Derek had said a few gentle, comforting words and held Stiles tight to him all the panic just melted away. Scott felt it there, smelled the cloud of sheer horror that Stiles was exuding just disappear. The nurse arched an eyebrow and wrote something down on her clipboard before waving them off.

And when Stiles had begun to blubber about how alone he had felt and how horrible it was that night, his mind screaming for one thing and his body crying out for another, watching Derek get there and the alphas fight, stuck inside his own head like –

“Like when you’re in a dream, or a nightmare, and you’re trying to get away from something, only you can’t, because you run in slow motion, and when you punch it barely lands, you know?”

Scott and Derek didn’t know, they couldn’t possibly hope to understand how it felt to be trapped inside your own mind with hardly any control over your body, but they knew that Stiles had gone through hell and that he would need taking care of, and that was okay, because they were there and would protect him, and they told him as much.

“We all will,” Derek reassured him, carding a hand through his hair as he hugged the omega to him, “Me and Scott and Jackson and Danny and Ethan and Aiden and Isaac and Allison and Lydia and Erica and Boyd, we’re all here for you. We’re not gonna judge you and we’re not gonna let any assholes do anything you don’t want. Okay?”

And it had been good for Stiles to hear it. It made him feel better and infinitely more safe, although if he was honest, nothing made him feel more safe than pressing his nose to Derek’s neck and taking a deep breath.

Speak of the devil, Stiles thought as he turned around in his computer chair and watched Derek pull himself through the window head-first. Stiles gave him an amused look. “What’re you doing?”

Derek gave him a raised-eyebrow look as he tried to extricate himself from the tree outside, which he had clearly climbed up. One of his legs had gotten a little stuck and he was twisting it in all sorts of interesting ways to get it out. “I’m…invading your room.”

Stiles smirked at him. “Why are you invading my room?”

Derek smiled back, a little strained as he gave a good yank on his leg and only managed to make the tree shake more. “Your dad’s on a graveyard shift, right?”

Stiles quirked an eyebrow. His dad had been trying to stay home at nights just in case any more Lambda alphas out there got any good ideas again, but it wasn’t always possible, given that he was working double-time to close this case and put the asswipes in jail permanently. “Yeah.”

A million thoughts clustered themselves into Stiles’s brain at once. Why was Derek just showing up here out of nowhere as soon as his dad was out?

Was it –? Every teenage high school movie Stiles had ever seen popped into his head and allowed room for only one possibility.

Sex.

Stiles gulped nervously. He wanted to sleep with Derek at some point but this whole thing was making him kind of pissed. Really pissed, actually. What, did Derek think he could just sneak in as soon as he was home alone? With no talk about it or preparation or invitation? Just turn up out of the blue with a grin on his face and expect Stiles to strip? What if he didn’t want it? His dad being out didn’t automatically mean sex was in. What the hell was Derek thinking? Just because they were dating didn’t mean he could just show up at the door – window, whatever – and expect it. Stiles felt hurt twist his insides and anger take over his motor functions. This was too presumptuous and alpha-like for his tastes.

“You can’t just roll in and expect me to sleep with you!” Stiles yelled at him.

Derek finally freed his foot and stared over at Stiles with wide eyes.

Stiles didn’t care how surprised Derek was. This was a dick move, especially after everything that had happened, and Derek’s feelings were not at the top of his goddamn priority list right now. “Do you know how asshole and _alpha_ that is? Seriously? After everything? We date for two weeks and you just come in here through the window with no warning or talk or anything and just expect me to get your fucking rocks off!”

Derek took a few steps towards him. “Stiles, I –”

Stiles pushed himself further up the bed, cheeks turning red and hurt filling his words. “I don’t care! I can’t believe you would do this, Derek! I thought you were different, I thought you cared, hell, I thought you were _special_ –”

“I’m not here to sleep with you!” Derek exclaimed, the tips of his ears turning pink.

That calmed Stiles’s rage enough to do something logical, like scent the air. Derek smelled like embarrassment and sincerity. He opened his mouth, letting a few frustrated speechless noises fall out, before trying again. “Oh.” He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself further. “You…you don’t want to sleep with me?”

Derek took a seat at the end of the bed, seeming just as flustered as the omega. Stiles could hear his heartbeat elevated, scent of worry thick in the air, as well as that smell of _Derek_ that, in large doses, seemed to turn his knees into jelly. “No, I –” Derek smothered a hand over his face. “Yes, I want to sleep with you. A lot. But that’s not why I’m here.”

Stiles just said another “oh” in a small voice. It took him a while to get the rest out. “Sorry.”

Derek smiled up at him, wary but forgiving. “It’s okay. I didn’t think you’d want to be home alone and you said your dad was out, so…”

Stiles winced. Derek’s intentions had been good and pure and he had totally overreacted. “You’re right. Thanks. Appreciate it.”

Derek moved closer, sitting with his back against the headboard and holding Stiles, leaning the other boy’s head against his chest. Stiles drank in the scent, feeling it put him at ease within minutes. Derek’s smell was musky like alpha scent usually was, but the actual scent of Derek was something else, sycamore trees and autumn leaves and the vaguest note of something kind of like a wood fire. His emotions would tinge it, but right now Derek smelled just as relaxed and happy as Stiles, and his scent shone through. Derek kissed the top of his head lightly.

“My normal scent,” Stiles began slowly. “Is that one covered by the scent suppressants?”

Derek pushed his nose into Stiles’s neck and breathed deeply. Stiles heard a little blip in the alpha’s heartbeat, and felt a shiver of some kind race across his own skin. His neck was sensitive, and Derek gave him a mischievous look like he’d seen that and was storing the information for later. “No. You still smell like Stiles, just not as much omega.”

Stiles shifted to get comfortable. When he was laying with his head on Derek’s chest like this Derek’s voice was a rumble that went straight through him. Not that he had a problem with that. At all. “What do I smell like?”

Stiles felt Derek smile against his neck and knew that Derek had caught the subsequent hitch in his breath. “Linen. Heather honey.”

“Heather honey?” Stiles wasn’t familiar with honey specifically made from heather. He was also trying to distract himself from the way that the rumble of Derek’s chest was going directly to his dick and kept a close watch on his scent.

“Mhm,” Derek replied, lips right up against Stiles’s neck now, and he had to be able to feel the way Stiles had gone all jell-o. “Smells different to regular honey. Tastes better.”

He put his lips to Stiles’s skin now, kissing and sucking. Stiles went totally pliant and was unable to respond beyond a half-assed “oh?” as if he was curious. Derek trailed his way down Stiles’s throat, kissing over his moles, until he finally arrived at the juncture of Stiles’s shoulder, a spot which made the omega actually moan.

He knew why. That was generally where a claiming bite was made, so it made sense that it was a place that felt good to nibbled on.

And Derek did nibble. Stiles began to squirm a little – more than he constantly squirmed, anyway – under his tongue, and he knew Derek was enjoying himself as well, feeling Derek’s redoubled efforts when a groan of pleasure escaped Stiles.

Stiles was pretty certain he was going to have a hickey, and the thought gave a weird rush in his chest. His omega was wriggling at the thought, loved the idea of being marked up by his alpha, wanted to hear the alpha say _mine_ again and again, make his alpha lose all control until it was the only word he was capable of, wanted to feel the alpha’s knot fill him and lock him in. And it wasn’t just his inner animal, either, Stiles’s human brain was one hundred percent sure that it wanted Derek sans pants.

He just. Didn’t want it to be rushed.

And Derek seemed totally okay with that, totally cool with making out and throat kissing and all that. He appeared fine with letting Stiles go at his own pace, not presuming anything, knowing that he turned Stiles on like crazy but not pushing it beyond what Stiles had told him to. Which was fuckin’ great, it really was, but Stiles couldn’t shake the fear that one day, Derek’s alpha was gonna want to do something that Stiles didn’t.

Derek pulled his mouth back from where it had been on Stiles’s collarbone. He nudged Stiles gently forward so they made eye contact, holding him by the shoulders. “You’re worried. What’s wrong?”

There was no point lying to Derek, they both knew that. He would hear Stiles’s heartbeat, might even smell his dishonesty, but most of all they would have to talk about this sooner or later. “I – I just – sex, we need to –”

And of course Stiles’s mouth picked that exact moment to stop working.

Derek raised both eyebrows. He spoke slowly, cautiously. “We need to…what?”

“Talk,” Stiles garbled, staring up at those forest-green eyes, meandering down to Derek’s lips, and he quickly filed various images that popped into his head away for later. “About it. So. We’re both, you know. On the same page.”

Derek nodded. “Okay. Anything in particular?”

Stiles wrung his hands. Derek had given him the workload but Stiles himself was the one that brought the topic up in the first place, so whatever. “I, uhm, I just – I don’t know if –”

He trailed off again and looked up at Derek, half hopeful, half helpless. The tiniest edge of amusement hung off Derek’s scent and Stiles wondered how he could be so calm about this. “You…don’t know if you want to?”

“No,” Stiles said, so fast that Derek cocked one of the eyebrows that had just gone down, “No, no, I do. Definitely. Yes. But, uhm, I don’t know, what with you being an alpha and all, how…”

The eyebrow went up even more, not in judgement, but something along those lines. “You don’t know how a knot works?”

Stiles blushed, giving Derek a light, barely-there slap on the shoulder. “Of course I know how it _works._ I, I just –” he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, trying to formulate, finding the struggle for words so difficult, they usually came so naturally to him, “How much control do you have during it? Like, your alpha?”

Derek’s head tilted back a little in understanding. “My alpha controls my actions sometimes, like your omega does yours. Sex is primal, so often the inner wolf comes out. But it’s not like I have no control at all.” There was a question there, a question Stiles hadn’t asked but that Derek seemed to pick up on. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to.”

Stiles bit his lip. “But – your alpha –”

“Alpha instincts mean different things,” Derek told Stiles softly. “My alpha sees you as its omega. It wants to make you happy, not hurt you. Yeah, it’s an animal, but it’s an animal who cares about you.”

“What if I smelled more like omega?”

Derek smiled at him, brought their lips together for a kiss. It was sweet, and Stiles felt some of his concerns melt away. “You’d turn me on even more. But it’d still be the same.”

A little smugness rushed through Stiles at the _even more_ part, and he leaned up to kiss his alpha.


	24. Technically We Didn't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo, here we go! I've actually just finished writing this thing so the updates will be daily from hereon out. I'm still editing but right now it's shaping up to be just over 75k, which is longer than I thought it'd be, but hey, no complaints here. Enjoy! :)

Derek’s head was buzzing when he left the next day. Stiles’s questions had shaken him, reminded him exactly what side of alpha instinct Stiles had experienced so far. That time he was assaulted on the street, it felt like years ago, assholes at school when he had first presented, the Lambda that came after him. It was no surprise that Stiles was so worried Derek couldn’t control himself, but he hoped Stiles had gotten the idea. It wasn’t a question of control, because Derek’s wolf didn’t just want to mindlessly fuck Stiles all day.

Well. It totally did. But only with Stiles’s permission, and only if it got Stiles off, too.

His wolf cared for Stiles, had for so long he could barely remember life before it. Yes, the alpha was about primal urges, and sex and procreation came under that, but it was protective, too, would not hurt its omega. Not that there would be any procreation, what with them both being dudes, and Derek felt a sliver of relief in the back of his mind. At least he wasn’t going to be some embarrassing alpha who grunted out “I’m gonna breed you good” in the heat of passion. Because every high schooler wanted to get pregnant and mated ASAP. No, at least they didn’t have that aspect to worry about.

Besides, it wasn’t like he would completely give himself over to the wolf as soon as he got hard. He was still Derek and would stay that way.

He sighed and flopped backwards onto his bed. He and Stiles had fallen asleep spooning, that much he knew, he distinctly remembered the view of Stiles’s hair and his own arm around the omega and Derek’s nose buried in his throat, the scent singing him straight to sleep, but they hadn’t woken that way. No, he’d woken up on his back, with Stiles nuzzling his face into the alpha’s chest, hand possessively curled around him.

It was the first time he’d stayed over in Stiles’s bed – after the Lambda attack he’d relegated himself to the sofa – and he had already decided he wanted to wake up that way every day for the rest of his life. He’d never slept so well in his life, woken comfortable and happy, Stiles’s warmth and scent calming every agitated nerve in his body.

In fact, he was still covered in Stiles smell.

He didn’t want to shower but he knew he had to, knew that werewolf noses were sensitive and meant everyone should shower every day out of respect for each other. And if he took a deep inhale of the outside of his shirt and brought to mind the memory of how Stiles had gone totally soft, breath catching and moaning under Derek’s lips as he stepped into the hot water, well, nobody was the wiser.

When he exited the shower and had dried off and dressed, he heard a heartbeat downstairs. Figuring his sister was back early, Derek took the stairs two at a time, grin on his face. He was excited to see her, had gone too long without sitting down and having a proper meal. Her schedule was hectic and often clashed with school. It wasn’t the money, there was plenty of money, but such was life when one was still a junior doctor. It was, she’d assured him, a rough patch that would only last a couple of years. That had been three years ago, but he didn’t resent her for it.

When he arrived at the bottom of the steps, however, it was not a bubbly older sister who had inherited many of Talia Hale’s features and their father’s kind heart, but someone rather less welcome.

Derek didn’t even bother biting back his snarl when he saw Peter standing bold as brass in the entryway.

He hadn’t seen Peter since the full moon two weeks ago and he had genuinely hoped never to see him again unless it was to beat some common decency into him. Peter had been in hospital, but Derek had refused to send as much as a bunch of grapes to the guy who would have done horrible things to Stiles had Derek not been there. He was followed by three police officers who held a calming hand up at Derek’s red eyes and lips curled back in a silent snarl.

“Don’t, son,” said the Sheriff, looking at him tiredly. John Stilinski had been trying to be home for his son but was working his ass off on the case, trying to get the alphas put away where they belonged. As far as Derek was concerned, the less John was home, the better. He seemed more stable now but Derek still didn’t want him around Stiles more than necessary. “We’re here to a full search of the house.” John unfolded a piece of paper and waved it, but Derek didn’t need to inspect it. He would have let them do anything they needed for evidence, court order or no.

Derek pulled his alpha back and approached the Sheriff. “Does he have to be here for the search?”

“Unfortunately,” the Sheriff grimaced sympathetically, ignoring the expression of mock offense that crossed Peter’s face. He held up a finger as soon as Peter opened his mouth to make some sharp quip. “You should probably head out, kid.”

Derek nodded. “Yeah. I’ll go grab my jacket.”

He flung one last glare at his uncle, who was watching him with that unsettling smirk of his, before heading upstairs again. When he arrived in his room he had to stifle his momentary panic for fear of someone downstairs hearing his rapid pulse.

Cops doing a full search of the house wouldn’t just be looking through Peter’s stuff, it would be through everyone’s, and while Derek generally didn’t really have anything to hide, well, he kind of did.

Scent suppressants.

He had been careful about keeping them, buying only a fortnight’s supply at a time so he didn’t have tons of them lying around. He could sneak them out in his clothes, no problem. Rather he get busted with them than the Sheriff’s kid, and he did have a feeling that Stilinski would be amenable to letting him off, given he’d kind of rescued his son and only had the drugs to improve said son’s quality of life anyway. But he wasn’t taking any chances.

He slipped on the leather jacket, shoving the pills into one of the pockets of his jeans. They came in little foil cases, and he was kind of worried about the rustling until a brief search through his trash yielded an old Reese’s wrapper. He put the wrapper into the same pocket and hoped it would cover the noise.

Derek padded down the stairs again, ignoring Peter as best he could. Both his wolf and his human brain – and it was rare for them to agree on anything, such was life as an alpha – were yelling at him to beat his revolting, traitorous uncle to a bloody pulp, leave him in a ditch somewhere and bring Stiles his head. The only thing stopping him was a half-ounce of self-preservation that informed Derek that jail was not nice and he would probably just impede the investigation.

He said his polite goodbye to the Sheriff and sat himself in his Camaro. He would bring his sister lunch, he told himself, and then he would try to resist the overwhelming need to go check up on Stiles.

 

 

Another week of school dragged by sluggishly, as if it was determined to prolong the last few days before the mid-term break. It had been nearly three months since Stiles had presented and he was honestly feeling like he could use some time off.

Lydia had invited them to a party on Friday to celebrate the holiday, which Stiles was planning on attending. He had convinced Derek to come along – “It’s not really my scene.” “ _I’m_ your scene.” “True.” – and Lydia promised wolfsbane spiked alcohol. Stiles was looking forward to just letting go and getting drunk. He knew it wasn’t a healthy way to cope with stress but he freaking deserved it. And he was also inordinately curious as to what Derek was like when he was drunk. Happy? Angry? Horny? Who even knew? Stiles wanted to know.

Some FBI agents were coming in to help his dad work on the case, so Sheriff Stilinski had asked Stiles if he could maybe stay over at Scott’s a couple times during the vacation. He wasn’t sure when he’d be home and last time he had left Stiles at home alone he had been so worried that he didn’t want to do it again. Stiles had nodded and had promptly called Derek and asked if he could stay over. Which, of course, he could.

John’s seemingly newfound concern for Stiles made him happy, gave him hope that they could maybe return to the way they had been, but he knew deep down that the chances were slim. Something had changed John when Claudia died, and Stiles was beginning to understand what.

He had connected her death with her beta-ness, somehow managing to project his existing stereotyping onto her illness. And he was petrified of being weak or being viewed as weak, and Stiles was the by-proxy extension.

His dad was doubly worried about him because he thought omegas were weak, and that stung, but Stiles was glad, in a way. They had managed to have normal conversations and even put smiles on each other’s faces. Granted, Stiles’s were mostly tight and cautious, and he knew that when his father moved quickly or unexpectedly Stiles tended to jerk backwards out of some reflex.

He knew his dad had seen this on one occasion. Stiles had been about to nudge a jar of pickles off the countertop accidentally and John’s hand had shot out with alpha reflexes to push it back. Stiles had flinched and his heartbeat had taken up the pace of a hamster in its wheel, but more noticeable had been the bitter smell of guilt hanging thick in the air.

Even if John wasn’t apologizing, he felt remorse, which Stiles considered progress, in a weird sort of way.

But his week didn’t exactly fly by, and by Thursday he had gotten so bored he decided to try something new.

The bell for lunch had just rung and Stiles and Derek had met by the lockers. Derek had laced Stiles’s fingers through his own and given Stiles a push, putting Stiles’s back firmly to the lockers while they made out and sorta trapping him there with his arms.

And god if that wasn’t the hottest thing Stiles had felt in a while.

They had made out a little more before Stiles pulled Derek into Coach’s office, knowing full well it would be deserted while Coach was out tending to his nicotine addiction. Hickeys were created, asses were grabbed, noises were made and they emerged considerably redder in the face than when they went in.

Only to find, standing right outside his office waiting to go in, the one and only Coach Finstock. Even people who had him for Economics and not sports called him Coach.

“Would you hormonal teenagers _please_ stop using my office as a bedroom!” He yelled, exasperated but not actually angry.

“Technically we didn’t –” Stiles closed his mouth as Finstock glared at him. Explaining that all dicks had stayed in their pants probably wouldn’t get them very far, especially given the love bite blossoming on Derek’s neck. Whatever, it wasn’t just alphas who got possessive.

Coach muttered a disappointed and mildly disgusted, “Get out,” and Stiles scrambled to obey, tugging an amused and slightly lightheaded Derek along with him.

He had gotten a smirk or two from Scott at the hickeys Derek liked to leave right where the claiming bite would go, one day a long way away. It was hypocritical as hell since Scott and Allison were totally all over each other and Stiles barely remembered what Scott smelled like before his scent had become so mingled with his girlfriend’s. “What?”

Scott had raised an eyebrow. “He’s serious about you guys.”

Stiles, for once, didn’t really know what to say.


	25. For Once

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't say I never give you anything...

Derek picked him up on Friday night.

They were staying over at Lydia’s – as members of the Inner Circle, as Stiles had heard it described by a freshman girl, their lunch table was allowed to stay the night, meaning they didn’t have to allot a designated driver – and Stiles would head over to Derek’s the day after. Derek jokingly referred to it as Stiles’s vacation house, in response to which Stiles responded that every house was a vacation house if you were on vacation, but he was actually really looking forward to staying over. Derek had slept over at his place but he hadn’t spent the night at Derek’s yet, and he was kind of curious.

He heard the car roll up and had straightened his blue button-down and let himself out the door before Derek even cut the engine. The alpha quirked an eyebrow at him as Stiles smirked. “You’re looking…ready.”

Stiles full-on grinned. “Are you kidding? I am getting _so_ drunk, you will not believe. I’m gonna enjoy this.”

Derek laughed, kissed him lightly on the lips, and started the car. 

When they arrived the party wasn’t in full swing, per se, but there were people milling around and talking. Lydia greeted them with a glass of wolfsbane punch which Stiles gulped down in about six seconds. Derek watched in amusement as Stiles surreptitiously put the glass down on a side-table, glancing around awkwardly.

Scott and Allison were slow-dancing despite the song playing not being very slow-dancy at all and were successfully blocking out everything that wasn’t each other, but Isaac saw Stiles and Derek through the crowd – was he getting taller? What the hell? – and made his way over.

Stiles gestured to the bottle of water Isaac held in one fist. “You don’t drink?”

Isaac looked down at as if he’d forgotten he had it. “No. My dad – he did. And it made him worse. I – I can’t.”

Derek nodded understandingly and changed the topic out of respect for the beta. “Are you still staying at Allison’s?”

“Yeah. My dad’s still in jail, or temporarily, whatever. Under the Gender Violence Act they can’t let him out on bail if he has immediate family that’s not alpha, with his history. I mean, I could go back home, but I don’t want to be alone.” His gaze had drifted off somewhere distant and he seemed to come back to earth, addressing Derek. “What about your uncle? Have you seen him?”

“They brought him to the house when they came to do a search,” Derek replied. He didn’t really feel like delving, but he knew he’d have to. “Other than that, no.”

Derek knew his grip around Stiles’s waist was tightening, that he was clutching the omega to him at the memory of seeing Peter with his eyes glowing and teeth out. He didn’t know what the alphas would have done to Stiles, whether they would have beaten him or raped him or what and while he wanted to know he also didn’t want to ask, because it made him see red and he wanted to put it behind them, for Stiles’s sake. Stiles wanted it over and done with and Derek would support him in that endeavour.

Part of him wanted to leave it in the past. Part of him wanted to find every alpha that had been present and rip their intestines out through their throats. But he knew which would cause Stiles more anguish so he devoted his time to protecting his omega.

Isaac left when Lydia called him over to help her with something, and Stiles turned to Derek, eyes reflecting the yellow lamps, turning his irises whiskey gold. “Are you okay?” he murmured. He put a hand over Derek’s, the one which was clenching around Stiles’s middle.

Derek realized he must be holding hard enough to bruise and he pulled away with a wince. “Sorry.”

Stiles smiled up at him, and Derek’s stomach did a loop-the-loop. He had been with Stiles for three weeks now, when was his body going to stop doing that? The jolts of electricity through his chest, the tingles, the way his heart felt like it actually stopped sometimes. He knew it didn’t, because he had good hearing and Stiles would be freaking out if Derek’s heartbeat actually stopped, but when was his body going to stop acting like a lit firework every time Stiles smiled?

He hoped it never would.

And when he looked down he realized the truth of his words as he said them. “I love you.”

Stiles pulled him in for a kiss that sent skittles through his spine. “I love you too.”

It was a good party.

 

Derek honestly felt like he got drunk enough off Stiles’s scent without the need for alcohol, but that didn’t stop Stiles. The omega had had a lot of punch, to the amusement of his friends, and they had stopped him when he tried to go swimming.

Derek had been in the bathroom and when he came back Danny and Isaac were holding Stiles by the armpits at the edge of the pool, laughing as they heaved him away from the edge. Stiles struggled, trying to get past them, grinning ear to ear and yelling something about going for a swim. Scott and Allison had snuck off somewhere, much to Lydia’s chagrin, and Ethan was watching his boyfriend wrestle Stiles with a twinkle in his eye.

“How is he so hard to keep hold of?” Isaac splayed a hand against Stiles’s chest, trying to hold him back, but Stiles didn’t stop squirming.

“He’s like a greased eel.” Danny grunted.

Derek’s alpha didn’t like Danny, another alpha, holding Stiles around the middle, even if he knew it was to keep Stiles from potentially drowning. He didn’t like other alphas touching Stiles, because now Stiles would smell like another alpha which kind of drove Derek’s wolf nuts, but he reined it in as he approached. Stiles had had enough overbearing alpha for the next decade.

“Derek!” Stiles’s face lit up with the kind of happy grin you only saw on a drunk and Derek smirked inwardly at the slur in his words. “Come ssswimmimming with me?”

Derek smiled like he was totally onboard with that plan, went up to Stiles as though he wanted them to jump in together, and promptly picked him up and carried him away from the pool edge and the other alpha.

Their spectators guffawed with laughter as Stiles began to whine about betrayal and rude boyfriends. Derek just kissed him on the tip of his nose.

“Dude,” Stiles said, dragging him back to the present, where they sat in Derek’s car, on the way to Stiles’s place to pick up his stuff before heading over to Derek’s ‘vacation house’. “Why didn’t you come swimming with me last night?”

Derek grinned. “Had all these weird hickeys on my chest. Didn’t think I should show people. No idea where they came from.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Are you saying I’m too possessive?”

“I like you when you’re possessive,” Derek returned easily, “It’s cute.”

Stiles grumbled something about being a creature of the night and that his possessiveness was terrifying and decidedly not cute when Derek pulled up to the front door. Stiles went in to grab his bags, which he had packed the previous night, refusing to let Derek carry them.

Derek could smell as well as hear that Laura was at work, the house deserted as he let them in. Stiles knew the way up to his room and bounded that way, while Derek went to get them some drinks.

Orange juice, since he didn’t have any cherry Coke, which was apparently the only type of Coke that Stiles would drink. To make up for this, Stiles drank a _lot_ of it, Derek thought, vaguely remembering last night, when Stiles had found a bottle of it in the fridge and drank the whole thing.

Stiles was lucky to have a werewolf metabolism and stomach bag. If an undeclared tried to drink three pints of Coke in four minutes, on top of too much punch and several slices of pizza, they probably would have needed the hospital. It was Stiles’s wolf that meant he was not totally and utterly hungover, but rather smiling, for some odd reason.

Derek tipped his head in curiosity at the adorably dumb grin Stiles was wearing when he entered his bedroom. Derek was about to take a sip of his orange juice when he inhaled deeply and almost dropped his glass.

Derek set the glass down on a set of shelves and stared over at Stiles in shock.

Because Stiles smelled _fantastic._ He’d never caught such a delicious scent in his life. His wolf was drooling and Derek’s own mouth watered. The heady smell of omega, of _Stiles_ , wafted around the room and Derek cleared his throat. “You…you smell…”

“Did you know,” Stiles said softly, taking a few steps towards him and smirking, “That alcohol counters the effects of scent suppressants?”

As Stiles got closer the scent got stronger and it went straight to Derek’s dick. All sorts of images began to fill his mind and he tried to push them out, because he knew what was going to happen if he didn’t.

Stiles didn’t seem to care, and Derek’s knees almost gave out when the omega stood right in front of him and Derek caught the musky scent of his arousal.

Derek seized Stiles’s back and pulled him in, pinning his lips onto the other boy’s and drinking in the scent, wolf going insane. He knew what he wanted to do to Stiles and it spurred him on, but a combination of those dirty thoughts and that scent had him hard by the time his lips had begun to trail towards Stiles’s earlobe, and he broke away from the embrace.

“Sorry.” he mumbled, ears burning, trying and failing to cover his hard-on with a hand. God knew he had plenty of ideas but Stiles didn’t want that, and just because he smelled incredible didn’t mean he’d asked for it.

“Derek,” Stiles grabbed hold of his shoulder and turned him around so he could make eye contact. Derek saw his lust-blown pupils, lips red and sensitive, could hear his thrumming heartbeat, “I want it.”

And _that_ was all Derek’s wolf needed to hear before it had driven him right back to Stiles, kissing and sucking and lingering on the spots which elicited moans, and he let himself think about what was happening.

He wanted to reduce Stiles to a blubbering mess, wanted to feel his omega writhe underneath him, make him moan in pleasure, make him keen and cry out and beg for more, fill him up with his knot, mark him all over, show the world that this was _his_ omega, make Stiles yell his name.

Stiles tore off Derek’s shirt and trailed a hand down his chest as Derek discarded the other boy’s shirt. He pushed Stiles backwards onto the bed and wasted no time following him, climbing on top and allowing Stiles to unbuckle his belt and pants. His alpha was roaring its approval and when Stiles was naked, too, the scent of his slick filled the air, making Derek groan.

He trailed his lips down the omega’s body, smelling Stiles’s arousal thick in the air and knowing this had to be teasing him. When he arrived just below Stiles’s waistline and the anticipation was stifling, he forced himself to turn and look up at the boy.

“Are you sure?” Derek searched Stiles’s face and scent for any hint of regret.

Stiles stared down at him through heavily lidded eyes. “If you don’t do it I will.”

Derek rumbled with laughter as he pushed Stiles’s legs apart, sliding a finger slowly into his entrance. He could feel Stiles’s omega body give for him but he was wary anyway, taking it slowly, finger buried up to the knuckle, searching for the bundle of nerve endings he knew was here somewhere.

Stiles moaned and ground his hips back onto Derek’s knuckle, which Derek took to mean he wanted more. He inserted another finger, moving in circular movements to make sure Stiles was totally opened up, when the pad of his finger hit something that felt a little different and Stiles gasped out loud.

He felt slick gush down his fingers, and continued moving them in regular circles so that each time, he would hit Stiles’s prostate, watching him cry out and knot his fingers in Derek’s hair. Derek kissed down Stiles’s navel and arrived at his cock, lying red and hard on his stomach. Stiles let out a moan that went straight through him when Derek took the tip in his mouth, swirling his tongue, his alpha loving every minute, like he might actually come just from watching Stiles.

He continued to tease Stiles like that, keeping his hand movements slow and refusing to take more than the head into his mouth. When Stiles’s hips pushed into the mattress, desperately searching for more, Derek added a third finger, adoring how Stiles’s face went completely slack and his eyes almost rolled back into his head.

“Derek,” Stiles whined, gripping Derek’s hair tightly between his fingers, “Need more.”

Derek took his mouth off Stiles’s dick, earning him an unhappy whimper, instead licking at some of the slick that had dripped off his fingers. He increased the pace of his ministrations a little, but he also didn’t want Stiles to come just yet. “Say please.” Derek smirked.

Stiles growled at him for teasing and Derek caught a glimpse of electric blue irises before they faded just as quickly, giving way to gritted teeth and arched eyebrows when Derek licked a long, slow stripe up the base of Stiles’s cock. “Please.”

Derek grinned and let his fingers flick briefly over Stiles’s prostate. “What do you want, Stiles?”

“Your knot,” he gasped, unable to control himself as Derek fucked him with his fingers, “Please. Now.”

Satisfied that between the fingers and the slick he wouldn’t be hurting Stiles, Derek pushed Stiles’s legs further apart and lined himself up. When he had pushed the head of his cock inside he threw his head back and groaned, trying to resist the urge to just bury himself to the hilt right away. Stiles’s warmth was maddeningly delicious, as were the happy noises he coaxed from the omega as he slid fully inside.  

He gave Stiles time to adjust, kissing his throat in the meantime, lingering on the juncture between his neck and shoulders. Stiles bucked his hips and gave Derek a look full of need. Derek grinned at him, pulling almost all the way out and then back in, slowly enough to not hurt the omega but forceful enough to make him see stars. Stiles’s moans turned wanton and he began to meet each thrust with his hips.

When Derek decided that wasn’t going to happen and pushed Stiles’s hips down into the mattress, his cock rubbed against Stiles’s prostate and a cry of pleasure tore out of him.

Derek used the new and apparently better angle to his advantage, holding Stiles down, hitting that spot on every thrust, Stiles’s eyes flashing blue and Derek felt his own alpha rise to the surface. It felt like years but it was probably only minutes before his knot began to inflate, rhythm stuttering.

“Derek,” Stiles whimpered, “Need it.”

The knot was too big to come out now, so Derek settled the engorgement on top of that nub inside of Stiles, grinding in slow circles. Stiles’s scent was beginning to turn desperate and he increased the pace as much as he could, before leaning up as far as he could to face Stiles.

“Come for me.” He growled, eyes flashing red, not quite an alpha command but definitely carrying a little weight.

And Stiles, for once, did as he was told. Come spurted onto his stomach and the clenching of his inner walls had Derek moaning in pleasure as it tipped him over the edge, too.

Between his hand and his knot Derek milked Stiles’s orgasm for all he could, and when the omega collapsed back onto the bed forgetting they were still tied together, he snuggled up behind him. He knew that Stiles liked to be the little spoon and he threw a hand over his midsection, burying his face in his neck and taking deep breaths. Before, that smell had riled his wolf up beyond belief and got him hard in record time, but now it soothed him, put his alpha at ease and he drifted happily off to sleep.


	26. An Insult To Her Memory

Stiles spent his vacation week at Derek’s, thankful for Laura’s heavy work schedule. They went to see a movie, had lazy days on the sofas, read together, even did a little homework. They ordered pizza and baked too many cakes and it was a week of blissful peace. Enveloped by Derek’s scent, Stiles had never felt so safe and so at home. It made him want to sigh with happiness all the time.

Of course, some of Derek’s scent had also rubbed off on him, because scent had that effect. He couldn’t smell himself properly, not really, but he did know that it was extremely hot when he smelled omega all over his alpha and his wolf gave a smug little grin every time it caught a whiff, a familiar tightening in his chest that Stiles understood meant _mine._

Scent wasn’t always the greatest, though. Derek was a private person and neither of them wanted to advertise to Laura what they’d been doing up in Derek’s room. They’d opened a window and aired out, but that didn’t actually help. No, all it meant was that Stiles and Derek found other places to do the dirty.

The leather sofas in the living room were awesome, but the kitchen was definitely Stiles’s favourite.

They hadn’t stayed cooped up _all_ week, but they hadn’t left the house much, either. They’d gone to the station so Derek could talk more with Parrish about life as a cop. Stiles’s dad was busy as hell in his office lately and asking his dad to give his boyfriend careers advice was just too weird, so they had called up and paid Parrish a visit.

“I looked into the HRT thing and it looks cool but I’m not sure it’s me.” Derek was saying. “It’s just a bit – soldier-y? If that makes sense? No offense.”

Parrish smiled. “None taken. You don’t like taking orders?”

Derek scratched the back of his neck. “I know I would have to as a cop, for a few years, definitely, anyway. But I don’t really want to.”

Parrish nodded slowly. “You want to make a difference and you can’t do that as well with someone else’s agenda calling the shots.”

Derek’s eyes went wide and Stiles watched him with amusement. “Exactly! You know what that’s like?”

The deputy shrugged. “It’s why I left the army.” Parrish laid a calming hand on Derek’s shoulder. “What does your family think of this?”

Wrong question. Derek’s face fell, Stiles trying desperately to reassure him by clenching his hand and rubbing his back. “If my parents were alive they wouldn’t have approved. But they’re not. So.”

Parrish tilted his head and his expression turned unreadable. “My dad wanted me to take over the family business. Electrician, you know. But I couldn’t. Mom would’ve wanted me to be happy, even if she was in another state with another husband.”

Derek’s eyebrows went up in the middle. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Parrish continued slowly, “Sometimes we focus too much on what people say, and not what we _know._ Did your parents ever outright tell you that you had to do something specific?”

“No,” Derek admitted, “But I don’t want to disappoint them.”

“Especially after they died,” Parrish’s face turned soft, “But really, parents love their children. And you thinking you have to be unhappy to make your parents proud – what would your mom say about that?”

Derek searched, flung around for those wise alpha titbits his mother used to come out with. It hurt, of course it hurt, even after seven years, and Stiles could smell it. “Sometimes we make sacrifices for the good of everyone else.”

Parrish shook his head and his gaze flicked over to Stiles before it settled on Derek again. “I don’t think so. I think she’d call it an insult to her memory.”

Stiles squeezed Derek’s hand tightly. Half an hour with Parrish was better careers advice than days in the guidance office.

 

 

 

Times were good, but the holiday was over too soon, and Stiles didn’t even get a chance to see what sex outside would be like – he thought it would be kind of fun, but Derek was paranoid about being seen – before it was time to head home again.

Derek had dropped him off and he stood in the kitchen at home. The house was dark and kind of cold, and Stiles realized it was because there was only one scent here, his father’s. His own scent had faded and the house smelled of loneliness.

Stiles had opened the fridge and was examining its few, pathetic contents when his dad’s cruiser pulled up. Half a lemon, shrivelled. A slightly mouldy piece of cheese. An old and sad-looking lettuce, and on the counter, a lone onion.

John walked over to him as he trudged over in full Sheriff gear, patting Stiles on the back and grinning tiredly. “Yeah, I gotta do some grocery shopping.”

Stiles smirked. “Yeah, no kidding. And I thought I was bad.”

John sighed heavily and sat down at the dinner table. Stiles knew that sigh, it meant stress and worry, and he turned to his father, searching him with his eyes.

John spoke first. “Son, we need to talk.”

Stiles gulped, his mind racing, and he tried to quell the nervous flutter of his thoughts. “Is this about Derek? Because I know I said I didn’t want anyone but Derek’s different, really, he was my friend before all this started –”

“I know, Stiles,” John cut him off in a voice that was surprisingly gentle, looking his son in the eyes. “It’s not about him.”

Stiles swallowed nervously and kept his distance, leaning against the counter.

“I hurt you,” John rubbed a hand over his face and Stiles caught the bitter smells of shame and guilt in the air. “I was trying to protect you and I hurt you.”

This was not what Stiles had expected. His mouth hung open and he closed it with a click. The burn. John wanted to talk about the burn. It had been, what, two months, two and a half? And John wanted to talk about it _now?_ Stiles didn’t say anything.

“It was horrible and it was wrong.” John continued. He choked up. Stopped. Stared helplessly at his son.

Stiles felt like a lead weight had settled on his shoulders. “What made you see that?”

John looked up at him in earnest, and Stiles felt the sincerity he exuded. “As soon as I’d done it I knew it was wrong. You’re my _son._ I should never hurt you.” He sighed. His expression turned helpless again but Stiles kept his mouth shut. “I heard Parrish talking to you and Derek the other day.”

Stiles turned away. He knew the Sheriff had been in his office but didn’t realize he was listening in. Dead mothers was something he and Derek had in common, but that didn’t mean it needed to be dissected. John’s eyes went a little watery but he didn’t cry. “An insult to her memory. Claudia’s. That’s what this is. Your mother loved you so much, Stiles.” Stiles felt a lump grow in his throat and forced back the dampness beading in his eyes. John looked up at him, trying to make eye contact, a silent plea for understanding. “She would have loved you, omega or not. Bisexual or not. Would have treated you just the same.”

Stiles looked at his father in a new kind of light. This was the first time the word ‘bisexual’ had fallen from John’s lips. Every other time it was just ‘gay’. As if John didn’t care or understand. But this, this was different, this was looking good, and Stiles couldn’t quite believe it. Using the right word was definitely a step on the road to acceptance, but Stiles didn’t trust himself to speak.

“I – I’m still learning,” John admitted, meeting his son’s gaze, “And I don’t expect you to forgive me right away. Or ever. But I want you to know. The people that hurt you? The alphas? Nobody is ever gonna hurt you like that again. Ever. They’re going in jail, and they’re staying there. I don’t care what it takes.”

For the first time in a long time Stiles looked at his father and felt something akin to hope curl itself in his stomach.

 

 

 

Sheriff Stilinski might be working his ass off to protect his son (“And every other omega in Beacon Hills, dad.” “You’re right, Stiles, but when I get my hands on Deucalion, he’s going to regret he ever saw you.”) but that didn’t he was about to let Stiles skip school.

Nothing ever seemed to warrant Stiles skipping school. Well, he probably could have after the whole Lambda affair, but he hadn’t wanted to. He wanted to get back into the swing of things. Now, not only did he want to skip school with Derek so they could ravish each other in the forest (“Not happening, Stiles.” “You know it will eventually.” “Shut up.”), he also had a house to help renovate. Because while his father might be doing everything he could to earn forgiveness he still wasn’t entirely sure on that whole front, and throwing himself into manual labour took his mind off things.

Isaac was cool about it, though. Because he might be mostly in charge of his own decisions, but the rest of the pack did have parents to answer to. So every day after school they piled into the Jeep or the Camaro and went over to Isaac’s.

They began by clearing out all the stuff Isaac didn’t want. There was a whole childhood of assorted crap in the basement – rotten shelving units, a rusty bike, a Halloween costume from years ago, a mildew-infected mattress, old toolsets – and it all went. It was stacked haphazardly into the Jeep and Stiles drove it to the dump. It had physically pained Derek to watch his omega drive off in what he referred to as a “semi-functioning death trap with no rear-view mirror”. Stiles pointed out that the Jeep did, in fact, have a rear-view mirror, it was just blocked by all the boxes of crap on the back seat, and besides, a rear-view mirror was not a legal requirement as long as you could see in the wing mirrors, which Stiles could. Derek had held him close and scented him with a slight growl before he had let Stiles leave.

When Stiles got back from his fourth and final trip he found his friends, his pack, huddled downstairs in the basement around the last piece of furniture to go.

The old freezer.

Or, as Stiles mentally referred to it, the torture chamber of the pinnacle of bad parenting. He didn’t say that out loud, because Isaac might be snarky but he was still sensitive – the guy had been through hell, he was allowed to be sensitive.

He didn’t look very sensitive when he took a metal baseball bat to the thing a few times, causing major dents on the lid. Actually, he screamed and yelled, sweat beading on his forehead, hair mussed and heartbeat thunderous.

Isaac wanted release and closure and he would get that from watching the freezer be crushed into an unrecognizable pile of scrap. His efforts with the bat, however, took a lot out of him but didn’t do much damage. The freezer was metal, too, and it was sturdy, and if he wanted to beat the shit out of it he’d be here ’til Christmas, as Lydia put it.

Derek had come up with an idea.

They managed to shove the freezer into the Jeep’s backseat in a move that was as miraculous as it was odd, and they piled into the cars, Allison sitting on Scott’s lap in the Camaro to make space for everyone, since the freezer was pretty huge. _Not huge enough to avoid a lifetime of claustrophobia,_ Stiles thought to himself, but he didn’t voice his feelings. Isaac’s dad was an entirely different kettle of fish to his own. The others had averted their eyes when looking at the inside of the freezer, the blood and scratch marks, but not Isaac. Isaac stared his demons in the face and he smiled.

They arrived at the mechanic’s where Derek worked, having phoned ahead, and Derek, Scott and Erica used their stereotypical alpha strength to drag the freezer out of the Jeep and into the garage.

Isaac watched, enraptured, grinning from ear to ear as Derek showed him which lever to hit, lowering a pickup truck on a jack lift down onto the freezer.

Crushing the thing would take more weight than the average pickup truck, but as Derek had explained, the lift was hydraulic. Stiles, Allison and Lydia understood, but everyone else seemed content to just watch as the car descended on the freezer. When the lift had lowered as far as it would go Derek pulled the car up again, and Isaac gave a cheer, a few tears of happiness streaming down his face at the sight of the mangled mess of metal that had been the bane of his existence for far too long.

When they got back to Isaac’s after the fourth day of basement clearing and found that the basement was finally spotless, they celebrated with pizza and juice. Isaac’s bliss was palpable for the rest of the evening, his joy turning him pink in the face and rubbing off on everyone else. Spirits were high and laughter was everywhere as the eight of them crowded into the kitchen.

Stiles pretended not to hear when Derek asked Isaac for a private conversation next door but his hearing was keen and, besides, it wasn’t like he was jealous. He was just insanely curious.

“I’ve been thinking,” Derek opened with. He was sure to keep a respectful distance from Isaac, not knowing how well the beta was handling the presence of other alphas and not wanting to upset him with thoughts of his dad. “Your dad was part of a secret society that my uncle was also part of. And I have access to Peter’s trust fund. And I bet you don’t want to stay here, so I’m thinking we could work something out.”

Stiles could hear the frown in Isaac’s voice. “I don’t get it, Derek. You don’t owe me anything. Where is this going?”

“Your dad won’t be getting out of jail anytime soon,” Derek’s voice was flat. “I know he hasn’t been convicted yet but the evidence is strong. And since my uncle kind of helped ruin your life I want to give you a present.”

“That’s some pretty roundabout logic there.” Isaac pointed out. Stiles agreed with him but he also felt a flush of pride at how considerate his boyfriend was. “I still don’t get it. Are you offering me money to get me to keep quiet?”

“You can tell the world about what your dad and the Lambda did,” Derek promised, “It’s not about keeping quiet. It’s about me having access to an insanely large trust fund – and I mean _insanely_ – now that Peter’s being charged. You have money problems, and I can fix them. So. How about this. We renovate this place, new furniture, whatever. And Peter will be paying for it all.”

Isaac gaped. “New stuff? The whole house?”

Stiles heard the smile on Derek’s face. “Yeah. I think some fresh paint might be a good idea. Also a new kitchen. We can fix the basement up, make something nice out of it, anything you want. Totally up to you. As much as you want.”

Isaac stuttered blankly.

Derek continued. “Did your dad have a college fund for you?”

Isaac shook his head lamely. “No. He said I didn’t need it. Was supposed to take over the family business.” He hung his head. “I hate gravedigging.”

“Okay, then. College too. Like I said, Peter’s trust fund is huge, like many millions huge. Anything you wanna study, whatever college you want. Okay?”

Isaac stared dumbly up at Derek before pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. “Thank you.” 


	27. He Doesn't Deal With Ultimatums Very Well

The next afternoon’s job was to make a list of exactly what Isaac wanted doing to the house. Isaac, of course, wanted the input of his friends, so their little group traipsed around upstairs, pointing out this flaw or that possibility.

“Dude, your room is seriously bare,” Scott had told him. “Lydia, write this down: beanbag. Shelves. Books to go on the shelves. New curtains.” Scott lifted his leg, demonstrating how bare feet stuck to the old linoleum. “New floor?”

“How about a carpet?” Allison suggested. “If we paint the walls as well we can match them. Do you have a favourite colour?”

“Blue,” Isaac stammered slightly, “I like blue.”

“Like a sky blue, or baby blue, or dark blue?” Erica prompted.

“Dark colours make the room look smaller,” Boyd supplied, ever in tune with his girlfriend. “Light colours make it look bigger.”

Stiles watched the exchange curiously. Isaac was severely claustrophobic, that much he knew, and it was understandable after the whole freezer thing, and Boyd handled it so well. He kept his tone quiet, not drawing unwanted attention, but alerting Isaac. Boyd was more observant than most people gave him credit for.

“Light blue, then.” Isaac smiled appreciatively.

It was determined that the master bedroom would be cleared of all Mr. Lahey’s things, which would be put in storage, and turned into a guest room. When Lydia had pointed out that they had said the entire upstairs needed new carpet, Derek had suggested putting a wooden floor in instead, and getting rugs. “It’ll last longer.”

The bathroom had been renovated before the Laheys had moved in, so that one was fine. When they got to the downstairs, they agreed to just put in the same wood floorboards throughout the whole house to make it simple.

“Except the kitchen,” Stiles had added, “Tiles in the kitchen. Not wood.”

The kitchen needed new cupboards – the old ones had been looking old for a while now, it was time for a replacement – and Isaac’s eyes bugged out. “How do you just install a new kitchen?”

Boyd smirked and told him not to worry, following Erica into the living room.

Isaac groaned. “New couches.”

Scott speculated about new lighting fixtures while Allison tried to talk themes with Isaac – because he knew a lot about his house, but he wasn’t understanding her thing with the themes. Stiles didn’t get it either. His own room was a weird collection of random things he liked. Who needed a theme?

Friday after school was one long whirlwind of paint swatches, floorboard and tile samples, colour schemes and curtain ideas until Boyd had to restrain Erica from her own excitement.

Over the weekend, the real work began.

They couldn’t do everything themselves, so Derek found some professionals to do the skilled work. They put down new floorboards, in red pine wood, which was pleasantly pale but with the vaguest reddish hints. The entire house was repainted, everything in an easy-on-the-eyes off-white colour, except for Isaac’s room, which was powder blue. While the workers were in doing their thing the teenaged pack went shopping for rugs and curtains and new couches and coffee tables. Stiles especially was fond of testing the couches, throwing himself on them and declaring them “too hard”, “too squishy” or “freaking perfect, dude”.

The floorboards and painting couldn’t be done simultaneously, so Isaac stayed at Allison’s for the following week, and they spent their time moving all the old stuff out and dumping his dad’s crap in a storage lockup. Isaac and Lydia had picked out a kitchen, which Derek and Stiles went to IKEA to buy while the workers finished up in the basement.

That weekend was spent assembling the kitchen, which was a challenge Stiles was happy to rise to.

Unfortunately he was banned from helping because he’d managed to put two units together backwards and his klutziness was not appreciated. Scott, Boyd and Derek assembled the kitchen – Boyd being the level-headed beta who actually read the freaking instructions instead of insisting he could do it without – while the others placed furniture and hung pictures on the walls. Allison and Lydia rearranged the living room layout four times before they were satisfied it maximised the available space. Stiles helped Erica and Isaac decide where all the rugs would go, burying his feet in them to test their softness. He was a tactile person, Derek could attest to that.

The basement, however, was a surprise to Isaac. Derek had something secret going on doing there which only he and Boyd were privy to, and Stiles respectfully kept his distance. He wasn’t sure what they were doing and he didn’t want to ruin the surprise, even if curiosity was gnawing at him like a bone.

Finally the house was finished, and they stepped back to admire their handiwork. What had previously been yellowing and old-lady-deco was light and airy, with warm, cosy touches and clear evidence of Isaac’s choice. It wasn’t as glum and Isaac lit up like the Fourth of July as they took a stroll through it. When they stopped at the basement, however, it was Derek who led the way.

The walls and ceiling had been plastered and painted, all evidence of cold, bare concrete long gone. What had previously been a single naked bulb hanging from a wire was now softer, much more pleasant lighting. It was carpeted, the whole room off-white and cosy.

There was a large corner where a giant plastic sheet had been laid down, on top of which an easel with a canvas stood. Stiles frowned curiously at it.

“Lydia said you like art.” Derek clarified, pointing to the one-third of the room that was slightly sectioned off from the rest. It was a studio of some kind, a small one, and Isaac smiled so wide Stiles was worried his face might actually split.

The rest of the room was clearly meant for relaxing, with a TV screen and gaming console setup, sofas, beanbags, blankets and cushions. It was basically an extra living room, with dedicated space for Isaac’s paints and for chilling out. There was no remnant of its previous use, no memory of that cold, dank basement where Isaac had spent the worst nights of his life.

Isaac could be happy here, Stiles thought contentedly.

 

 

 

Their happiness was, as happiness often is, short-lived.

Isaac’s life was infinitely better now that he’d managed to move out of the Argents’ and support himself. To help with paying the bills he’d started helping at the animal clinic and was also renting out the spare bedroom to a roommate.

Boyd had jumped at the chance, eager to get away from his parents for a while, and had moved in. It was good for Isaac to not be home alone all the time, and to be surrounded by beta pheromones rather than alpha ones in his own home. Boyd’s stoic quiet balanced Isaac’s jumpy snark and the two quickly bonded, even if Isaac was kind of annoyed with Erica being over all the time and making mushy faces with his new roommate. He had also begun to bond with Lydia over his artistic talent, and was planning on going to art college.

Stiles had informed Derek of the developments with his dad and felt like nothing could drag him down. John approved of their relationship – “Not that he’s going to say no, since you literally rescued me from, like, death” – and was looking forward to ‘officially’ meeting Derek at some point.

“By officially meeting, do you mean dinner at gunpoint?” Derek had asked lazily as they snuggled on the couch in Stiles’s living room.

“Yeah, probably,” Stiles yawned, “But he’s working his ass off trying to get your uncle locked up so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

The Sheriff had come home from work a few days later and Stiles could smell the disappointment and guilt pulsing off him before he even got inside.

“Dad?” He looked over at his abnormally tired father worriedly. “What’s wrong?”

John had sighed, debated quickly over whether to discuss police business with his son, and relented, as they’d both known he would. “It’s the case.”

When he said it like that there could only be one case he was talking about. Stiles paled. “What? What’s happened?”

“We’ve been tracking Lambda affiliates for the past few weeks,” John shook his head in disbelief, “And we just had a lot of evidence sabotaged.”

“Sabotaged?” Stiles felt a fist of panic in his chest and didn’t even bother restraining it. “What do you mean, sabotaged? Are they not gonna be able to put them away? Is Deucalion going to walk?”

“God, no,” John added hastily, and the tenseness in Stiles’s shoulders relaxed somewhat. “Did you know Argent put body cameras on everyone? Including Derek? We literally have footage of them committing the crime. Deucalion, Peter, Kali, there’s enough for them to go away for a long time. It was all premediated, so the sentence is longer. No, those ten who were in the clearing, they won’t be out for a while, that’s just a matter of time until the trial.”

Stiles allowed himself to exhale and release a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding. “Then what’s the problem?”

“We were going to nail their sister group,” the Sheriff shook his head sadly again, “Orange County have been trying to for years but they couldn’t. Lack of evidence. Now we had connected them with the Lambda but all the cyber tracking we’ve done is gone and they’ve hacked our systems.”

“Hacked?” Stiles was almost yelling now. “Who the hell hacked the police?”

“It doesn’t matter, Stiles,” John met his eyes tiredly, “What matters is that your name was all over those files and these guys are angry.” He put a hand on Stiles’s shoulder and for the first time in a while the omega didn’t flinch from his touch. “They’re blaming you for their friends getting arrested. Stiles, you’re not safe here.”

 

 

 

Stiles had, in typical Stiles fashion, refused to listen to reason.

The Sheriff had told his son that he would be sending him away for a while to stay with family in Maine, to which Stiles had responded something along the lines of “go to hell”.

And it wasn’t that Derek didn’t understand. He did. He would probably have done the same if Laura tried to make him just up and leave Beacon Hills. Being away from Stiles made him uncomfortable and easily irritated and he couldn’t imagine living that way for any length of time.

But while Derek might hate the idea of Stiles not being near him, he hated the idea of dead or injured Stiles even more. And he told his omega as much when they were lying in his bed the next day.

“What, you’re on his side?” Stiles exclaimed. “Seriously, dude? Just pack me off to Maine? For real?”

Maine was an awfully long way away.

“No. But I will _not_ let them hurt you.” Derek pressed a kiss to Stiles’s temple when idea occurred to him. “Why is it that your dad wants you to go to Maine? Won’t they just track you there?”

“Yeah,” Stiles replied, frustration clear in his scent, “But it’s so far away, and Gramma Stilinski’s always home so I won’t be alone and more of a target.”

“There are places in Beacon Hills you could live and not be alone.” Derek flashed the other boy a grin. “Like this place. You could come here and stay, I won’t leave you home alone. And I bet I’d be more useful in a fight than your grandma.”

“My Gramma could make Ennis cry,” Stiles muttered. “I’m not some hapless omega, I’m not _weak._ I hate this. I hate this thing where everyone thinks I need an alpha in order to survive.”

Derek knew the venom in Stiles’s tone was not directed at him but rather society at large so it didn’t bother him, but his omega being upset did. “Your dad doesn’t think that. He’s just worried, and overprotective. Remember, he’s the Sheriff. He must have seen some crap in his time.”

Stiles had read enough confidential files to know that Derek was right, that his dad had seen real horror and it was probably running through his mind when he thought of his son’s safety, but still. Stiles nuzzled his nose in Derek’s collarbone and sighed. “Only alpha I need is you.”

And if that didn’t make Derek’s wolf lift its head and rumble in approval he didn’t know what would.

 

 

 

Sheriff Stilinski approved of the compromise on one condition, although judging by the slight tang of relief in the air it was more than he had expected. Stiles apparently did not deal well with ultimatums, but that came as no surprise to Derek. No, Stiles would be allowed to stay at Derek’s rather than be dragged by his hair all the way to Maine _if_ he finally sorted out that sit-down meeting-Derek-dinner-thing his dad had been asking him for.

“Dad,” Stiles’s voice was almost whiny, “You’ve met the guy. When I got sick before I presented. And then you met him again when he saved me from the Lambda. You remember that, right, Dad? The time he saved my ass from a pack of lunatics?”

John gave Stiles a pointed look. “Yeah, and you’ve been dating for, what? A month? Six weeks? And he and I have not been under this roof at the same time?”

Stiles decided to conveniently leave out the part about Derek sneaking in through his window because he wasn’t sure how well it would be received. Derek had only done it when his dad wasn’t home, which was more frequently than not, but it was to look after Stiles, not for the sordid purposes John would assume it to be.

Well. It was totally also for sordid purposes. But that was only if John would definitely not be home and they could air out in time for his arrival.

And Stiles didn’t want to tell his father that since the frying pan incident Derek hadn’t wanted to be in the same room as the Sheriff because he was itching to give the older alpha a piece of his mind, probably in a manner that involved fists and teeth.

“He’s shy,” Stiles supplied. It wasn’t entirely a lie, Derek was shy. But definitely not with him or their little pack. And definitely not in the bedroom. Or the kitchen, as the case might be. “He’s…he’s not worried what you think of him, but…”

“Whatever,” John eyed his son, “I want to make sure his intentions for you are strictly honourable and that he’s not pushing you into anything you don’t want to do.”

“He’s not,” Stiles replied quickly. Too quickly. His mind had been absorbed by thoughts of the last time his room had been used for sordid purposes and the earth-shattering orgasm that followed. Stiles swallowed at his father’s raised eyebrow. “Dad, I was in heat and he didn’t do anything. Because he knew I didn’t want it. He’s a nice guy.”

“Doesn’t matter,” John declared, “He’s coming over for dinner or you’re going to Maine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you caught the Pirates of the Caribbean reference, you're awesome.


	28. Good Behaviour

Derek was an asshole and found the whole thing hilarious.

At least, that was Stiles’s diagnosis. Because how the fuck else could this be _funny_? Being blackmailed into introducing your boyfriend to your dad, the Sheriff, who had access to actual guns?

It wasn’t like the Sheriff was going to shoot him, Derek reasoned. He was pretty stellar in the boyfriend department. Had John rescued his wife from a pack of psychopaths who hated and oppressed her entire gender? As far as résumés went, his was off to a good start.

“He doesn’t know about our _intimacy,_ ” Stiles hissed, straightening his tie, then questioning whether he should be wearing a tie at all. It was just dinner at his house, wasn’t a tie a little overkill? “And I’m not sure how he’d approve of it.”

He felt a pair of strong arms wrap around him from behind as Derek kissed that place on his throat that made him all wobbly. “You mean…this?”

Stiles blinked several times and fought to keep control of his brain. They did not have time for a roll in the hay, and besides John would smell it on them, and wouldn’t _that_ set dinner off to a good start. He stopped Derek’s marauding hands before they could go any further. “Yeah.” He replied, trying to keep his voice even. “Not sure how that’d go down.”

“Shame,” Derek’s teeth caught lightly on his earlobe and Stiles shivered involuntarily. “I guess it’s a good thing you’re moving in tonight.”

Stiles swallowed thickly and stared over at the mirror. “Is the tie too much?”

Derek grinned from behind him. The alpha was wearing a nice pair of jeans, a dress shirt and a blazer but had refused the tie. “When it comes to you, any clothing is too much.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, elbowed his boyfriend in the ribs, and smiled at the mirror, knowing Derek could see. “See, this is why he’s gonna shoot you.”

 

 

 

John had pulled out his cooking skills from whatever dusty shelf they’d been on, so they were, of course, eating steak. It was John’s favourite and one of the few things he could successfully cook so that was probably all for the best.

When they had sat down and were tucking in to the interesting salad Stiles was fairly certain had come straight from the grocery store, John offered Derek a beer, which Derek accepted, and also to Stiles, which was politely declined. Stiles offered the excuse that beer tasted like old laundry but in reality he did not want to go off his suppressants again. Lydia’s party had been a test, a one-time-thing. Both he and Derek had enjoyed how crazy it drove them but sex without them was just as good, and it wasn’t worth the risk.

“Did you know California has the lowest drinking age in the country?” This was John’s idea of polite small talk. And, of course, it was small talk, but it made Stiles suspicious, and he quickly reined in the scent. Where was John going with this?

“No, sir, I did not,” Derek had a look on his face like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard. “What’s the highest?”

“Twenty-one,” the Sheriff had replied, digging into his steak, “In Texas.”

Again Derek nodded his head in polite and utterly fake interest and Stiles watched him with slightly narrowed eyes. He was too skilled an actor for his own damn good, Stiles decided. He wasn’t sure if he should be suspicious or grateful.

“So what are your plans for the future, Derek?” John eyed the other alpha across the table as he asked that inevitable, delightfully irritating question.

“I was actually thinking about law enforcement.” Derek grinned and shrugged modestly, as if he knew it sounded like a super suck-up-y thing to say to the freaking Sheriff but he just had such a passion for that career that he couldn’t lie. “Stiles brought me in to ask Parrish about it, and he’s been really helpful. Great guy. Talked to us on his own time, and everything. And I think Isaac has a hero-worship thing going on, since the guy shot his dad.”

It wasn’t your normal meet-the-parent dinnertime conversation, but what Derek’s reference to the whole Lambda ordeal did was serve to make him look genuine. Because only someone immersed in the conversation could keep it going outside of topics like the weather and his future career. And while Derek didn’t particularly care if he came across as incredibly genuine, he definitely didn’t want to be seen as fake. Stiles had not been exposed to this crafty side of his boyfriend before but he was definitely beginning to like it.

“Actually,” Derek continued, spearing a piece of meat on his fork, “Stiles was the one who suggested law enforcement and helped me find out what I wanted to do. I’m not really a super academic person, and Stiles probably rescued me from a lifetime of misery.” He shot the omega a grateful smile.

Stiles returned it and made a mental note to both kick Derek’s ass and give him a mind-blowing orgasm. Probably in that order. Stiles was not the only little shit around here, it seemed.

Dinner went well, Derek being totally honest and his father beaming like he’d already accepted him into the family. It genuinely looked that way, and Stiles was surprised at how well it’d gone. He hadn’t expected his dad to be so okay with the fact that Derek was very obviously a dude.

But then John had invited Derek over, so he’d brought in on himself. It wasn’t exactly some nasty surprise Stiles had sprung on his dad.

When it was time to wrap up for the night and for Stiles to move in with the Hales the Sheriff laid a heavy hand on Derek’s shoulder.

“Now, son,” he gave a small grimace, “You understand that when I say this it comes from the best place, but I’m serious. If you do anything to hurt my boy, I will make life miserable for you.”

Stiles caught a glint of something dangerous in Derek’s eyes. Something that said Derek was not absolutely cool with John, that the frying pan incident was not over and forgotten in his mind. It was something akin to anger and possessiveness, all wrapped up in concern for Stiles.

It was a glint that said _that goes for both of us, my friend._

But it was gone just as quickly, and Derek was shaking John’s hand with a smile, and was of course entirely earnest when he next spoke, that much was clear in his scent and heartbeat. “If I ever hurt Stiles, I’ll help you do it.”

“Okay, can we please just go?” Stiles waved his arms around above his head. This was getting drawn-out. “Stiles would like to go home and sleep.”

As soon as Stiles had started up the car and was well out of earshot of the Sheriff, he turned to Derek with an accusing tone. “You little minx!”

Derek grinned, pleased with himself. “What? I showed you, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“He adores you,” Stiles groaned, banging his head on the wheel, “And you know it. You suck-up.”

“Hey, I told the truth.” Derek shrugged, smugness filling the air. “What, did you think it would end in fists?”

“Yes!” Stiles half-shouted, “Yeah, I kind of did!”

“Then it’s good it didn’t, right?” Derek smirked over at him. “He didn’t even go for the gun once.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and almost crossed his arms over his chest. He would have, if he hadn’t been driving. “How come me meeting your family is Laura bouncing off the walls and you meeting mine is something out of a movie? A really disgustingly sweet movie, by the way.”

“You are not the person to be saying other people are hyperactive,” Derek reminded him. “You make Laura look like an old lady when it comes to flailing and yelling. She’s only like that because she’s excited I finally brought home a date.”

“Or because I’m so awesome,” Stiles corrected, “Probably because I’m so awesome.”

By the time they got back to the Hale house Laura was fast asleep in her downstairs bedroom and tried to tiptoe for her sake, but Stiles wasn’t really the sneaky type and Derek was accomplished at many things but tiptoeing four beers deep was not one of them. If she woke she didn’t complain, however, so they made their ungainly way upstairs.

Stiles had just shrugged off his jacket when Derek sidled up behind him in that way Derek did, putting his arms around the omega and smiling into his neck. “See? Nobody got shot.”

Stiles turned to give Derek a semi-sarcastic look when he felt two hands unbuttoning his shirt and realized Derek was completely bare-chested behind him. Now this was a development Stiles could get behind.

“Yet.” Stiles muttered as Derek popped the fourth button on his shirt.

He turned his head and Derek’s lips met his in a searing kiss as his shirt was pushed away. He turned around and ran his hands down Derek’s chest, shuddering as the alpha grabbed him by the ass and pulled him closer. He felt hot breath against his skin and a dick at half-mast against his own and a thought came back to him, a mental note from earlier that night.

Stiles unbuckled Derek’s belt and yanked his jeans down and off as Derek left a series of red marks on his collarbone. Stiles pushed Derek backwards until they both landed on the bed, and there was a petulant noise of protest when Stiles hovered out of the way of Derek’s ability to leave hickeys.

The noise of protest turned into a muffled moan as Stiles edged himself down the bed and blew hot breath over Derek’s half-hard cock.

He coaxed Derek to full hardness with small licks and nibbles. Derek moved to put a hand in Stiles’s hair and then dropped it awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure how it would be received. Stiles grabbed the hand and put it firmly in his hair, feeling smug as he felt the hand grip as though it was the only thing keeping him on Planet Earth.

When he finally took the entirety of Derek’s length into his mouth – which was no mean feat, but Stiles had practice – and hollowed out his cheeks the alpha let out a little punched-out gasp, and when he began to move and Derek’s hips jerked off the bed he knew it wouldn’t last long.

“Sorry,” Derek mumbled.

Stiles withdrew, placing a fist around instead and pumping a few times while he smirked. “Derek, if you want something, you just gotta say it.” He thumbed over the slit, eliciting a groan. “You want to fuck my mouth?”

Derek’s eyes went from scrunched up in pleasure to wide in surprise and he nodded unsteadily.

Stiles dragged him to the edge of the bed to stand and got down on his knees. He kept moving his hand along Derek’s cock and when he took it back into his mouth Derek looked like his legs might actually give out.

He glanced upwards and gave a slight nod to signal it was okay. Derek put a tentative hand on the back of his head and when no complaint came, began to yank Stiles’s head forwards and thrust simultaneously.

Stiles held onto Derek’s hips, jerking himself off with one hand and rubbing the other along very well-defined muscles. The thrusts sped up, Stiles became glad he’d had that short break earlier or else his jaw would be beginning to ache by now, and when Stiles felt the fingers tighten in his hair he hummed around the rapidly forming knot, causing Derek to shout a swearword and come straight down his throat.

Stiles himself came just as Derek had gone soft, groaning with release as he made a colossal mess of the floor. Derek fell back on to the bed with a happy sigh and Stiles plunked down beside him. He was pulled in for a kiss, arm wrapped tightly around his middle, and felt a smile dance along Derek’s lips.

“What?”

“Was that for good behaviour?”

Stiles rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “You’re always on good behaviour.”

“True,” Derek admitted, “But I like it when you’re not.”


	29. Climbing The Walls

More bad news and the end of their short-lived period of happiness arrived unceremoniously in the form of a phone call from Sheriff Stilinski.

Stiles was in the shower at the time so Derek took the call and was considerably paler than his usual golden tan by the time Stiles got out.

“Stiles,” Derek audibly swallowed a lump in his throat, “Turns out the Lambda have a parent group.”

“A _what_?” Stiles stared at him in incredulity from the bathroom, dressed in nothing but a fluffy towel around his waist. “Somebody’s in charge of _them_?”

Derek nodded, face turning somber. “Yeah. The Lambda was just the Beacon Hills chapter of a bigger organization.”

“ _Bigger_?” Stiles’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. “Bigger and badder, I assume?”

“They’re called the Delta and they are basically the single largest alpha supremacist group in the country.” Derek informed him, quoting the Sheriff directly, “And your dad says that according to their internet chat thing the head alpha has arrived Beacon Hills.”

Stiles’s jaw hung open. “In Beacon Hills? _Here?_ Why?”

“Several possibilities,” Derek told him, clinical and to-the-point. They didn’t have time for emotions right now. “One, here for the first trial, Lahey’s, which is in less than two weeks. Two, here for you.”

Stiles ran a hand through his sodden hair. “You think the boss of the biggest asshole club in the U.S. is here for me? Derek, there are three million omegas in the country, why would the alpha of alphas be here for _me_?”

“Because you beat them, Stiles!” Derek jumped up from the bed and grabbed his omega by the shoulders. “Because you wrecked their plan and got them arrested, and now they’re being exposed and criminalized. They will lose so much support as soon as people see them being convicted – Stiles, them being charged is _huge._ And they’re pissed.”

Stiles played absently with the hem of Derek’s Henley. “What are they gonna do, just turn up here and get the claws out?”

“I don’t know.” Derek admitted, pulling his omega in tightly. He needed to feel him safe in his arms, needed to know, soothe his wolf, make himself entirely sure that Stiles was happy. He buried his nose in Stiles’s throat and took deep breaths, inhaling the scent of steam and shampoo and omega and _Stiles._ Heather honey, sweet but not cloying.

“It’s going to be okay,” Stiles clung to Derek’s shoulders, holding as though he were afraid someone would rip him away, “We’re going to be okay. We _are._ ”

 

 

 

There was an armed guard outside the Hale residence twenty-four/seven.

Initially, Stiles had whooped at the chance to miss school. His dad had suggested both of them stay home and under guard until after Lahey’s trial, at which point they would re-evaluate the Delta boss’s business in Beacon Hills. Stiles crowed and beamed and while he did a little victory dance Laura had rubbed her temples and muttered something about the living room couch smelling suspicious that caused the tips of Derek’s ears to turn pink.

As soon as she had left Derek had swept Stiles up the stairs and showed him _exactly_ why the bed was superior to the sofa when it came to intimacy.

Stiles concluded that he really liked being fucked into the mattress.

But they couldn’t just screw all day. They still had schoolwork to keep up with, exams after the Christmas holiday and stuff to do. They were smart enough to get the bare minimum of their work done in a few hours and then spend the rest of the day doing other things.

Which, unfortunately, did not involve leaving the house.

It had only been a few days of ‘house arrest’ but already Stiles was starting to go up the walls, and he made that known to anyone who was in the house at the time. Which happened to be just Derek, because even though she’d been granted rights to Peter’s trust fund Laura still worked long hours so she could get promoted faster and not have to be ordered around by the senior doctors all the time, some of whom were apparently huge douchebags she wanted to take a sledgehammer to.

And Derek was restless, too, but nobody did restless quite like Stiles. He zapped from room to room, straightening all the pictures on the walls a million times, reorganizing the fridge and reorganizing again, arranging Derek’s sock drawer in rainbow order, which didn’t take long considering most of Derek’s socks were black. He taught himself to make soufflés, stacked Derek’s books in alphabetical order, watched three seasons of a new TV-show, was too jittery to read. Derek put his foot down when he entered the kitchen and found Stiles scrubbing out the oven.

“Stiles! Stop cleaning! You’re a guest, it’s not up to you to clean!” He took hold of Stiles under the arms and pulled him away gently.

Stiles’s head whipped around and he flashed some teeth, waving a cloth coated in oven cleaner at Derek. Oven cleaner which was extremely corrosive and therefore _not to be messed with._ There was an orange label on the bottle that warned to keep it stored well away from unpresented persons, since their healing would not be able to keep up at all. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

Derek continued dragging Stiles away from the oven. “Doesn’t matter. You want to help? Go ask the deputy outside if he wants coffee.”

Stiles grumbled and exited the house as Derek poured the soapy water out and rinsed off the rubber gloves his omega had been wearing and tried not to internally whine about how now Stiles would smell like latex.

He was extremely unnerved when Stiles came back inside wearing a huge grin. Derek adored his boyfriend and would have done anything to make him happy, but that grin didn’t just mean happy. It meant _trouble._

 

 

 

It turned out that Stiles knew the deputy in question, which, really, should not be surprising, given he spent so much time at the station when he probably shouldn’t.

Deputy Haigh was nobody’s favourite down at the station – he had actually hit Parrish with his car once. It had been written off as an accident but it was widely known that in reality, Haigh was a dick and had broken Parrish’s femur with the bonnet of his car on purpose. Parrish was fine, of course, but it didn’t sit well with the others at the cop shop, even if Sheriff Stilinski couldn’t really pursue it for all the red tape.

Apparently he had been given the job of sitting outside the Hale house and was regretting his life decisions – specifically, becoming an officer. And it did remind Derek that being an officer wasn’t all car chases and raids; sometimes it was sitting in a cabin for hours on end, trying not to be too distracted by the radio, occasionally taking breaks to do paperwork, and that kind of sucked. But it didn’t change his mind.

Stiles came back inside with that manic smile as Derek heard the sound of the cop car pulling away and driving off somewhere. He looked out of the kitchen window in alarm. “What’s going on?”

Stiles shrugged nonchalantly. “I talked to him about the case when he let slip a little bit of info that my dad did _not_ share.” Derek raised an eyebrow expectantly. “They don’t actually know who the boss _is._ I know, right?! They literally have no idea! It could be anyone!”

The news was a shock to Derek but he had more pressing concerns. “And you sent Haigh away…why? And how?”

“He’s coming back,” Stiles supplied, tapping his fingers on the table listlessly, “But I sent him over to my place to grab some stuff for me.”

Derek turned incredulous. “You have Haigh at your beck and call?”

Stiles shrugged again. “I might know some stuff about the incident with Parrish that he doesn’t want my dad finding out. It’s a good motivator.”

Derek dragged a hand across his face. “Jesus. And you think sending our armed cop away was a good idea…why?”

Stiles rolled his eyes lightly, with no real malice behind it. “He’ll only be gone a half hour.”

Sure enough, Haigh was back soon after. Derek had forcibly parked Stiles on the couch and paced up and down the living room, keeping watch the way the cop would’ve done if he were here. Stiles made a strange, shrill noise and jumped up to unload the car, dragging a large glass board and several marker pens out of the boot.

Haigh waved him off with an annoyed grunt as Stiles tugged the rolling glass surface inside, setting it up in the living room and immediately beginning to scribble on it.

Trying to deduce the identity of someone about whom he knew nothing occupied Stiles and the printer for an entire afternoon – at least, until their friends arrived. Derek had phoned Scott and half-begged him to come over – anything to keep Stiles busy and not twitching all the time – so Scott had brought Allison, Isaac, and Lydia.

Apparently Lydia and Jackson had broken up – nothing nasty, they just weren’t working any more – so she had a lot more free time and was one of the few people capable of keeping up with Stiles’s mouth, which seemed to operate at a hundred miles an hour, so Derek was grateful to have her there.

Derek loved his omega, he really did, but there was no denying that Stiles was a handful. A handful he adored, but a tornado, really; whirling and flailing, utterly unstoppable and extremely tiring.

He left Stiles with Lydia and headed upstairs with a mutter of something along the lines of reading a book.

 

 

 

After an entire week of not leaving the house Derek admitted to himself that he hadn’t expected to have this much sex in his _lifetime._

And it never got boring, they made sure of that. There was always something new to try, some crazy new position which more often than not ended in laughter. Derek swore that Stiles had been googling “Kama Sutra Expert Mode” because some of the ways he tried to bend were just unnatural. Derek was making a mission out of counting Stiles’s moles, which was difficult because he invariably ended up getting distracted and doing something else.

And while Stiles’s pet detective project kept him busy enough, sometimes Derek found himself knotting the omega just to calm him down a bit, because Stiles was sleepy after sex and even more tired after being knotted. Derek wondered idly if this was similar to what Stiles’s heat would be like, but reminded himself that Stiles might not want him there. It was quite common for people to want to handle ruts and heats alone, since they were exposing such an intimate, animalistic side of themselves, and while Stiles and Derek were totally honest with each other, Stiles did sometimes have problems opening up. It would be presumptuous to assume that the omega _definitely_ wanted him there. Besides, there were still another two months until Stiles’s heat was due.

And three weeks until the Christmas holidays. And less than week until Lahey’s trial.

Derek and Stiles would have to go to the trial, but they hadn’t really talked about it yet. Both of them would be giving evidence, as well as Isaac and Chris Argent, but beyond a perfunctory talk from a lawyer they hadn’t actually spoken about how they felt.

“Hey,” Derek looked up from his book over at Stiles. The other boy sat with the laptop, gnawing on his nails, knee jumping. “Stiles, you know Lahey’s trial is next Thursday, right?”

Stiles gave him a look that reminded Derek of a deer in headlights, not least because of how his eyes appeared a soft brown and utterly doe-like in the lamplight. “Yeah. I know.”

Stiles was defensive, which was an indicator that something was probably up. Derek put the book down and slid closer, threading their fingers together. “Are you okay with it? Testifying?”

The omega didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. Derek could see and smell the truth. _No,_ he wasn’t okay with it. When he thought about that night in the clearing his skin crawled and he wanted to vomit. Sometimes he did. Talking in front of all those people wasn’t exactly going to make it easier, either.

Derek put an arm around his shoulder and Stiles leaned in to his touch. “What if I have a panic attack?”

Derek pressed a kiss to his hair. “They’ll understand. They’ll adjourn while you calm down and then carry on. It’s a state appointed lawyer, not some corporate shark. He won’t push you too hard. And me and your dad and Scott, we’ll all be right there. You’ll be okay, Stiles. We just gotta get the trials over with.”

And God, Derek hoped it was that simple.


	30. Trials and Tribulations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting close now....

The morning of the trial dawned gunmetal grey, bleak and foreboding.

Derek and Stiles got up together, tried unsuccessfully to eat breakfast together, got dressed and brushed their teeth together.

Derek kept picking at imaginary bits of lint on his suit and Stiles was trying and failing to make his tie knot straight with wobbly hands.

Four times already Derek had taken those fingers, held them still in his own, and pushed as much serenity as he could into his scent. Omegas and Stiles in particular were especially responsive to scent but Stiles’s nerves stifled everything else. Derek held Stiles in his arms, stroking his hair reassuringly, as the boy who wasn’t a boy anymore dry-sobbed in his arms and tried desperately to keep it together, not feeling all that reassured himself.

They were trailed to the courtroom by their armed escort, who left to go wait out front. There would likely be reporters milling outside and elbows might be required so he stuck around, watching the street with beady eyes. Sheriff Stilinski pulled his son into a bear hug when he saw him, giving Derek a hearty clap on the shoulder, nervous as well but with years of experience of compartmentalizing. He’d had cases get personal before and his fair share of threats, and he was doing his best, but he still smelled slightly worried.

“The judge is a beta,” John informed them, “I know her and she’s fair. Works with young people and people with serious trauma all the time, son, so don’t worry about choking up or anything. And there’s an omega in the jury, who might understand what you’re going through better than the rest of us.”

Stiles nodded numbly. He didn’t feel like he was going to be able to form coherent thoughts, much less words. Someone handed him a bottle of water and he took it, clutching like a lifeline, but not entirely sure what to do with it.

Derek’s touch kept him grounded throughout the preamble of the trial, and he focused on the audience who had come out to watch. He saw Isaac sitting right at the front, jaw clenched and eyes stormy, flanked by Scott, Erica and Boyd on one side and Lydia on the other. A few seats from Lydia sat Allison and her parents, with an older man and a woman, clearly all part of the same group, since they sat alone. Stiles remembered Chris saying he came from a family of hunters of vicious alphas, most of the hunters being alphas themselves. The older man was, and his face was schooled into neutrality, cap lying in his lap. The alpha woman beside him was a haughty kind of beautiful, and only young enough to be Chris’s sister, or so Stiles would guess. She noticed his absent-minded staring and he flicked his attention over to where Mr. Lahey sat in front of the dais.

Lahey wore the ugly state-issued clothes but other than that resembled his usual self. He was clean-shaven, round glasses perched on his nose, but his hair was a little more greying than usual. He still wore the same perpetually displeased look and it gave his face the appearance of an unusually tough steak. His eyes met his son’s and bored into them. Boyd put a calming hand on Isaac’s arm but it didn’t look to be necessary. Isaac sat back in his seat and tilted his chin upwards in defiance. His expression was hard, jaw set and anger clear in the lines of his face. This wasn’t some poor, wronged boy, cowering in terror and anxiety, the kid Stiles had pulled out of a locked freezer. This was Isaac waiting for justice to be dispensed, his own man, not plagued by his father’s cruelty.

Isaac would probably always be claustrophobic. This much Stiles knew.

The seventeen-year-old who sat on the bench had grown up too fast, had been hurt and victimized so much that his being able to look his father in the eye at all was something close to miraculous. And here he was, staring his own personal torturer down, message clear. _You don’t own me. You’re nothing to me. You’re going to pay for what you’ve done._

Pride swelled in Stiles’s chest and he hoped Isaac could smell it from here, hoped he knew what it was for. Isaac was damaged but he was strong. He would be okay.

Stiles and Derek had taken seats in the front row beside Scott, John sitting behind them with the other Argents, since they wouldn’t be giving evidence. Neither would Lydia, Scott, Allison or Erica and Boyd, but that didn’t seem to matter. Isaac had no-one but his friends, but he was better off, and he knew it.

When the lawyers were introduced, however, Stiles felt his father’s sudden flare of something closely resembling panic and he turned around in his seat, not caring how rude it was.

They couldn’t talk in the cavernous room, it would echo and _everyone_ would hear them, so John pointed at his phone. Stiles dug his mobile out of his pocket, Derek watching the screen anxiously until the text from John came in.

_Lawyer change. That’s not a state appointed defence attorney._

Stiles fired back a rapid reply. _Then who is it?_

The response was slow and Stiles’s knee jumped skittishly. _He’s from a very expensive law firm. The Delta must’ve hired him last-minute. That there’s a shark._

Stiles’s heart sank. He wasn’t sure what possible argument there could be against Mr. Lahey’s actions but if the Delta had brought in some highbrow lawyer then that must mean there was hope for their case. It wasn’t as watertight as Stiles had thought.

But there was no time for such thoughts, because they would only upset Stiles further and he knew it, so he put it out of his mind, drew relief from Derek’s fingers threaded through his own, and watched as the preamble ended.

Isaac was called to the stand first. He put his hand on the Bible and swore that only the truth would leave his mouth. Stiles had allowed his cold, rational brain to overtake his thinking to spare himself the otherwise-inevitable panic attack and extreme anxiety. He noted that with the ill-fitting suit, sea-blue eyes and golden Disney curls Isaac looked the part of the innocent boy beautifully, even if he wasn’t as vulnerable as his appearance made him out to be.

Isaac’s testimony was damning. Of course, one witness account was not enough to put someone in jail, but it got the ball well and truly rolling and there were several sympathetic noises made by the jury as Isaac said his piece. It began after his mother died, he explained, and got worse after his brother was killed in combat and Mr. Lahey took to drinking. He described both unfair treatment, like Mr. Lahey forcing him to work in the graveyard at night with no sleep, to downright abuse, like throwing things, and punches, and the infamous freezer. Photos were shown, because the Sheriff’s people had been over to photograph the thing before Isaac had dropped a truck on it, and Stiles swore he heard a gasp when the camera revealed that the scrapes on the lining were marks made by fingernails and bloody claws.

The speech was clear, and well-formulated, and convincing. Isaac didn’t look like a child making things up for attention, which Stiles assumed would be the defence’s main strategy, he looked like a young man trying to leave a horrible past behind, and it showed. Everything felt like it was going swimmingly until the defence lawyer got to his feet.

He was an alpha, had been introduced as Gabriel Valack and he was a tall man with an air of smug superiority and a strong upper-class British accent. He took to the floor, walking back and forth as he spoke, clearly meant to intimidate Isaac, but if it worked, the beta didn’t show it.

“You claimed that your father’s violence was directed at you because of your gender?” Isaac didn’t answer immediately, clearing his throat, and Valack rushed into the next question, as if Isaac was an idiot who didn’t understand long words. “He abused you because he is an alpha and you are not?”

Isaac nodded firmly. “Yes. That’s correct.”

“And yet you also claim that the abuse began after your mother died, which according to records was when you were four years old. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“But if the abuse was directed at your gender, why would my client then attack an unpresented child?”

Isaac seemed to spot that this was headed down a dangerous road and recovered quickly. “My father abused me since my mother died, but when I was young he often told me that he wouldn’t accept me unless I were an alpha like my brother. When I was seven and we had Gender Studies at school he told me that if I turned out a weak beta like my mother not to bother coming home.”

“And yet you did anyway. You came back and you never told anybody about the abuse you received at home?” There was a knowing lilt to Valack’s voice, as if he knew what Isaac’s answer would be and was prepared to strike.

And the typical answer to that question would be _yes, I did, because my father told me not to tell anyone and that it would get worse if he did,_ but Valack was clearly prepared for that answer so Isaac chose his words carefully. “Plenty of people at school knew what he did and nobody ever did anything about it. He told me I could go to the cops and they wouldn’t believe me, and every time I had a visible bruise he told everyone I got it playing lacrosse. And for a while, it got better, as I said in my original statement,” he reminded the lawyer with an edge to his voice, “And I thought, maybe this will all be over and we can move forward. But it started again, he turned back to alcohol again, and it wasn’t until Stiles and his friends found me that it stopped.”

Valack turned to look directly at Stiles with a twinkle in his eye. “But Mr. Stilinski knew about the abuse while you were at school, and did nothing? Your friend Stiles? Why do you think he would do that?”

The question was a blow to the stomach for Stiles. He had only found out about Isaac a month before he presented, when Isaac himself had turned seventeen, and shortly afterwards he found out Isaac’s dad had stopped beating him up, so Stiles hadn’t pursued it. He’d done nothing wrong. But to the jury and to anyone else, it made Stiles look untrustworthy and unpleasant and hypocritical and a terrible friend.

Isaac smiled as he turned to face the judge, smiled like he had everything under control and exactly how he wanted it. Stiles very much doubted that was true, but Mr. Lahey’s abuse had done a lot of things to Isaac and it had made him a damn good liar. And while he wasn’t lying per se, he appeared to have a clear head and a good hold on the situation. “Your Honour, I don’t think asking me about someone else’s motivations for their actions is a very good portrayal of the truth, since I don’t know why Stiles did what he did. I’m also not entirely convinced it’s relevant to the case.”

Judge Dunbar raised her eyebrows a little before nodding thoughtfully. “The witness is right. Mr. Valack, if you wish to know the reasons behind Mr. Stilinski’s actions, you may ask him when he witnesses. And unless you can prove that this is relevant somehow I will be asking you to pursue another line of inquiry.”

Valack held his hands up as if to surrender and sat back down with a knowing, “That will be all from me.”

Isaac was dismissed from the stand and Stiles wondered absently who the judge would call on next. There was a good chance it would be him. He and Isaac would be providing the main basis for Mr. Lahey’s abuse of his son, but Chris and Derek would be the ones talking about what happened in the clearing, since Stiles’s mind was too heat-addled to be relied on.

He winced as Judge Dunbar butchered the pronunciation of his name and approached the stand. Derek watched him worriedly, but Stiles was okay. His brain was cold and logical right now and he would be alright. He put his hand on the Bible and promised to tell the truth, leaving out the part that if he did lie they’d never smell or hear it on him, and climbed up to the stand.

They started with the prosecution, again, and it was a nice kind of lead-up. The lawyer asked him enough questions to clear up Valack’s insinuations, which Stiles was grateful for. He talked about when they’d found out Mr. Lahey was part of the Lambda, they’d hurried over to Isaac’s at record speed and described Lahey’s behaviour when confronted. The questions about the incident in the clearing were few, respectful of his lack of lucidity. He told the lawyer how he had been attacked and how Mr. Lahey had been there in the clearing beside all the others and had yelled angrily at him.

When Valack got up Stiles turned his rational-thinking brain on him and answered the questions politely. He pointed out how Stiles had forcibly gone into someone else’s house on a hunch, to which Stiles corrected him that his omega hearing was strong enough to pick up the sounds of shouts and bangs from the basement and that was how he had found Isaac at all. That seemed to throw the lawyer a little before he fired off another question.

“You believed that abducting Isaac was the correct solution, then?”

This was sloppy. Stiles saw right through that one. “The legal definition of abduction is to take someone against their will. Children under seventeen can’t be held to that decision so stealing anyone under that age is kidnapping. But Isaac was already presented, therefore capable of making his own decisions and not legally required to obey his father. Isaac came with us willingly and he thanked us for what we did.” He had effectively destroyed that particular line of inquiry but this was not the time to pull punches. Stiles turned to Judge Dunbar. “Your Honour, might I ask if my definition of abduction is correct?”

The judge looked at him as if she knew exactly what he was doing and nodded. “You are correct, Mr. Stilinski. The younger Mr. Lahey has already said he went with you of his own accord and as he is seventeen that decision is legally permissible. Mr. Valack, please do not waste the court’s time.”

It looked like Judge Dunbar was on their side, but this was a jury trial, so there was a limit to what good that could do. Stiles was thankful for her sympathy but it didn’t take Valack long to recover. He spoke a few well-greased words of apology, then chose another route of investigation.

“Mr. Stilinski, I would like to ask you about the alleged attack you described on the full moon night of October.” He didn’t give Stiles time to react before beginning his next question. “You claim you saw Mr. Lahey in the clearing, and yet in your statement to the police you say your mind was heat-addled. Would you truly wish to incarcerate an innocent man, Mr. Stilinski? How can you be sure of your own testimony if you were not clear-headed?”

“Mr. Valack,” Judge Dunbar interrupted sharply, “Testimony given while heat-addled cannot be singularly considered acceptable in a court of law. For it to be valid it must be verified by other witnesses, and there are still other witnesses for the court to call on. If you continue to disrespect the rules of procedure I will have you removed for contempt.”

 _That_ shut Valack up. He sat back down and Stiles was allowed to leave as well, the judge calling up Chris Argent to the stand.

He fielded the questions like a champ. He told the court how he’d taken the precaution of attaching body cameras to everyone as a standard in his line of work and the video footage was played, it showing a blurry but recognizable image of Mr. Lahey in the clearing. He backed Stiles’s statement and was a hard enough man that Valack didn’t try any of his heavy-handed intimidation again.

The jury was beginning to fidget by the time they called the fourth and final witness, Derek, to the stand. He described how he had watched the pack of alphas suggest they would knot Stiles against his will and how he suspected them of drugging the omega. Valack took it easy to begin with, as if he were working up to a killer question that would throw Derek and the entire case out of balance, and when it arrived, it was not as expected.

“If Mr. Stilinski was in heat and causing a lack of control in all the other alphas, why were you then not affected? It appears a hole in your testimony. Omega scent is widely known to affect alphas, to the point where an alpha can want to knot someone they did not previously wish to. If it had such a profound effect on the others, why were you, with your close proximity, not remotely affected?”

The obvious thing to do would be to turn to the judge and claim that to be irrelevant, because it kind of was, but it would give the jury the impression that there was a gap in Derek’s story he wasn’t willing to explain.

So Derek raised his eyebrows slightly in a mildly intimidating manner and explained himself. “I cared about Stiles and I didn’t want him getting hurt. Moreover, I knew that things said or done in heat do not count as consent, since the mind can’t actually agree. Didn’t matter what Stiles did, he didn’t want sex, and I respected that. Yes, the scent was very distracting, but I focused on the boy I cared about rather than just the omega.”

Some of the jury were looking dubious and Valack pounced on this. “You just focused? You managed to take your mind off omega heat scent? That’s some considerable control, very unusual for an alpha as young as you.”

Derek stared right back at Valack and gave a small shrug of one shoulder, as much of a shrug as he could get away with in a courtroom. It was a _what can I say? I’m not a rapist_ type shrug and the jury understood it, of that Stiles was sure. “I love Stiles, and I did then too. Loving someone is about putting them before you. That’s what I did.” And then, just to really drive the point home, “It’s not that miraculous. I mean, if you’re in love with someone and you can’t even give them the right to choose, what kind of love is that? It’s not love, it’s possession. And it’s wrong.”

There were noises from the jury and Judge Dunbar banged the gavel for them to quiet down. She quirked an eyebrow at Derek at his informal jargon but decided not to pursue it. He was dismissed and each of the lawyers made a speech.

The prosecution went over the overwhelming evidence, the number of witnesses, the solidity of the case from a logical standpoint. There was plenty of emotion in there too, throwing around words like “innocent” and “omega” a lot. Valack gave his speech, maintaining that the proof of a lifetime of abuse on Mr. Lahey’s part was sketchy, the consent issues surrounding Stiles’s heat were questionable, and that Mr. Lahey’s own intentions in the clearing were unclear.

The jury adjourned, and Stiles watched them leave. He saw a short woman in the jury with grey-streaked black hair and Asian features watching him with interest. It occurred to him that she was the omega in the jury, and that she must also be on scent suppressants for her not to be exuding omega scent. As soon as the jury had gone everyone else was let out, reassuring each other and overusing the vending machine.

The jury came in after a surprisingly short period and Stiles fought not to fidget in his seat. The cold, logical part of him was gone, replaced by jitters and abject fear. Derek caught his hand and held it, but even Derek couldn’t calm these nerves. It was gut-wrenching.

The jury found Mr. Lahey guilty of child abuse, gender-based violence, cruel and unusual punishment against an unpresented (Stiles suspected that was the freezer thing), attempting to violate the Omega Heat Rights Statute of 2002 and conspiracy to sexual assault and grievous bodily harm. He was given a sentence of forty-two years without parole in a single-gender prison in Nevada. Alpha-only prisons were hellish places, the security insanely strict to stop alpha hormones from killing everyone. It wasn’t your average don’t-drop-the-soap run-of-the-mill jail. It was cruel and exactly what Mr. Lahey deserved.

Once the trial was over Isaac insisted on taking everyone to dinner to celebrate. Since Isaac’s father was already forty-nine the chances of him living to leave the prison were low, and Isaac was overjoyed at the prospect of never having to see his father again. It put him in good spirits which were felt by everyone as they chewed their pizza.

Stiles felt an inordinate amount of relief, too. The Delta had sent Valack to try and save the case but it had fortunately not worked out. On the one hand, this might mean they were even angrier with him, but at this point he was having too good a time to even care. They ate, they celebrated, happy sighs were let out and tensions relaxed and when they got home Stiles leaned contentedly up against Derek, falling asleep in each other’s arms.


	31. Consider

Once Mr. Lahey’s trial was over Stiles let himself be wrapped up in Christmas holiday cheer.

Often he and his dad had gone to see Gramma Stilinski for Christmas, but that was not to be the case this year. Scott’s dad had decided not to drift through and grace the McCall household with his presence, so Stiles had convinced his father to let them do Christmas together.

Of course, pack didn’t end with Scott and Melissa McCall, and as Boyd was doing Christmas with his own family Isaac was invited too, but the Sheriff was not _too_ happy about the latest addition to their dinner table. Mostly he was irked because Stiles had not asked before inviting Derek and Laura over, failing to recognize that Stiles was employing once of his favourite methods: “it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission”.

John wasn’t about to make Stiles un-invite the Hales, and as Stiles reminded him they didn’t have a big family at home either since Peter was still stuck in the county jail and even before that was just three people. Bail had been huge because he was deemed a threat to others but Laura and Derek could afford it – they’d just decided not to. Nobody wanted Peter around, but it would mean a quiet Christmas in the Hale house.

Since the car accident, Derek and Laura had never been much for big, crazy Christmases – mostly because that was what they had had as children, and it was too pathetic for them to do the whole shebang with only three people in the house after the life and laughter of previous holidays. Stiles had assured Derek that it was not a huge insane all-day party he was putting on and Derek had agreed under those terms.

They had gotten a tree in the Stilinski home, and had decorated it as per Stiles and John’s tradition – insanely and illogically. Allison had told them about her mother, who had planned that year’s Christmas colour theme to be purple and silver, which were not very Christmassy colours in Stiles’s opinion, and Scott had grinned over at his friend. They both had vivid memories of Stiles turning up at the McCall house to hang out after decorating the tree, wearing a tinsel scarf or with a string of beads wrapped around his entire torso or baubles looped over his ears. Christmas was about _fun,_ it always had been.

The Stilinski tree stood in the living room, flashing dimly against the walls with multicolour lights – because yellow was so _boring,_ eleven-year-old Stiles had insisted – and a giant silver star sat precariously on top. The room smelled of spruce and it reminded Stiles of Derek’s sycamore scent – and why did the guy always smell like the woods anyway? Sure, he lived there, but Laura didn’t smell like trees, not really. Derek smelled like outdoorsy stuff and a specific season of the year, whereas Stiles got stuck stinking of sweet laundry. He didn’t even own anything linen, so why he smelled of it, he had no idea. Life was so unfair sometimes.

He was going to have to find some heather honey and see what the hell the deal was.

Stiles grabbed his stuff and slung his bag in the car. It was the last week of school, he could totally do this.

 

 

 

The Winter Formal had been announced while Stiles and Derek were under house arrest, so neither of them had paid it much attention.

House arrest had ended after the trial, not because the cops had gotten word that the big bad boss had left town, but because nobody knew what to do after that point. The last trial, for the other nine in the clearing, was slated for mid-January – Lahey had been tried earlier because he was also under arrest for abusing his son and was a literal danger to his own family. They couldn’t just skip a month of school when nobody had any idea what was going on, so school it was.

And in reality, Stiles knew it was for the best. People were going to be dickheads to him, because he was an omega and also just because people could be dickheads sometimes. The only thing to do about it was to carry on with his life, middle finger in the air, so that was what he was going to do. He was going to go to school and be with his friends, because that was what he liked to do.

The Lambda had dictated his life. He wasn’t going to let the Delta have the same kind of effect.

He was his own man, there was no immediate danger, and right now, the biggest _fuck you_ to an asshole alpha he could think of was to completely ignore the Delta. Let the cops deal with it. Sure, he was trying to figure out who the big boss was, but he wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. Fuck the assholes. He was getting on with his life. The Delta had no place in his life and he wasn’t going to let them bug him. He wasn’t skipping school now.

Besides, Derek and Stiles had been going kind of nuts all cooped up like that, so it was probably for the best.

It meant, however, that they had to put up with Lydia shoving flyers in their faces every six minutes and telling them about the theme and the food and the decorations and the music and _god please save us_.

“Winter?” Stiles had asked in a bored voice.

“No!”

“Christmas?” He had sighed, picking at his vegetables.

“No!”

“Let me guess, winter wonderland?”

Lydia smacked him upside the head with a stack of flyers and Derek snickered. Stiles turned to look at him accusingly, mouth hanging open. “What, you’re on her side? Huh?”

Derek just grinned and pecked him on the cheek while Lydia rolled her eyes. “The theme is _frost._ Think blue, white, silver.”

“Silver?” Scott had complained. “Who owns a silver suit?”

“Yeah, silver’s not really my colour.” Derek had deadpanned, causing the entire table to erupt with guffaws.

Stiles turned to Lydia as Allison launched into an explanation of how exactly baby blue was a more attractive colour than people gave it credit for and smirked at her. “So. Who’re you going with?”

Lydia and Jackson’s break-up wasn’t a sore spot, per se, but Stiles had the feeling that this was the first time Lydia had a dance to go to without a date, which was obviously weird for her. She just quirked an eyebrow at him. “Aiden. Why?”

Stiles shrugged, as if to say _no reason._ But this was Lydia, and she understood his thing with ulterior motives because she was just as bad herself, and narrowed her eyes at him. “Stiles. What?”

Stiles rolled his shoulder as subtly as he could – which was to say, not very subtly – in Isaac’s direction. The guy was the only one out of their little group of friends who didn’t have someone to go with.

Lydia frowned at him, trying to keep her voice low. “I can ask Malia.”

Stiles did a double-take. “Really? Malia? Wow, Lydia, wow. Isn’t she dating an alpha from the lacrosse team?”

Lydia gave him a look like she couldn’t believe he was being so dense and tossed one strawberry-blonde lock of hair over her shoulder. “No, her and Theo broke up.”

Stiles didn’t follow high school gossip enough to know that not only had his ex-girlfriend left him, she had done so for _Theo Raeken,_ but this stunned him into silence. Lydia just smirked at him. “They broke up just before the attack on you. Apparently Theo’s a lying piece of crap. I’ll ask her.”

 

 

 

The last week of school dragged by unbearably slowly, but when Stiles looked back on it from Friday afternoon, it felt like a whirlwind. He’d gotten detention from Harris for PDA in class, so he and Derek had been sat on opposite sides of the classroom and forced to copy out _I will not kiss my boyfriend in class_ on a piece of paper a few million times. Just to fuck with Harris, Stiles had dotted every ‘i’ with a little heart and had drawn a huge cupid’s heart with _S + D_ in the middle. When he handed it in Derek had fought to keep a straight face and Harris had let out a long sigh before telling him to get out.

But now, as he stood in front of the mirror trying to make his hair look less like a mess, it felt like the week had flown by.

At some point he gave up, accepted that his hair was always going to be something resembling a haystack, thought back to that time in freshman year he’d gotten it buzzed and shuddered. He tugged on dark jeans and a light blue dress shirt, not buying into the whole tie thing. Ties were ridiculous. Who needed them anyway?

He hopped his way downstairs to hang out and wait for Derek, leaning on the kitchen counter and eating a Pop-Tart. The Sheriff looked up from the sofa and smiled at him. “Lookin’ good, son. Do we need to have the talk again?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. Like hell did they need The Talk. No, thank you. It was also slightly too late – the deed was done. Stiles was damn far from pure and virginal thanks to Derek. Not that he bought any of that shit people said about omegas. “You’re just jealous ’cuz you don’t get to go to fun dances anymore.”

John smirked. “Sure. Do I need to tell Derek to have you back by midnight?”

Stiles scoffed. “As if the time of day ever stopped us before.” He watched John get flustered and his own mouth widened out into a grin. Making fun of his dad was a new favourite hobby.

Eventually, John held up his hands. “You two are of age, so whatever. Just be careful at the dance, okay? Don’t drink.”

Stiles didn’t need to be told that but he nodded regardless. “Sure. I’m driving us back, anyway.”

Officially, John wasn’t aware that his son was on illegal suppressants. But since he was, after all, basically a professional detective, he suspected. He knew better than to ask outright, and if he disagreed with Stiles’s choice, he didn’t say so. Even with the Lambda temporarily in jail, now was not a good time to be smelling of omega.

Derek pulled up to the curb a few minutes later and Stiles got into the passenger seat. Since the thing was so ridiculously low to the ground it wasn’t an easy thing to do it gracefully, so Stiles plopped his ass onto the seat with as much dignity as he could muster. Derek was letting him drive the Camaro back from the dance and Stiles was looking forward to getting his hands on those revs.

Derek himself was wearing jeans and a white button-down, and Stiles laughed belatedly. “We match.”

Derek grinned and pulled away from the curb. “You want me to get you a corsage?”

Stiles glared over at the steering wheel. Even with his eyes on the road, Derek could see it, and he laughed in response. “Okay. I won’t.”

When they arrived at the school it turned out Derek had acquired not a corsage but two buttonhole flowers. Stiles gave him a look that said _are you for fucking real_ and Derek threw up his hands. “What? It’s a dance, it’s what people do at dances.”

Stiles rolled his eyes in mock irritation and allowed Derek to thread the flower through the buttonhole on the lapel of his jacket. They were two pale blue carnations, matching Stiles’s shirt in an odd enough way, untraditional but pretty nonetheless. Stiles could smell something vaguely like possessiveness mixed with pride coming off of Derek when the flower was attached and he smirked at him. “Did you just go all alpha possessive on me, man?”

Derek began to look like a deer caught in headlights and the tips of his ears turned pink. “No.” Stiles quirked an eyebrow and Derek’s blush deepened. “Maybe. You don’t have to wear it if –”

Stiles leaned in and silenced him with a peck on the lips. “I like it when you go alpha on me.”

They strolled up to the school hand in hand, noting the pale yellow fairy lights strung up outside the door, and the interior decorations. Glass statues, clearly made to look like ice, were dotted around the room. Paper snowflakes dangled from the ceiling, blue and white garlands decorated the walls, as well as a sea of cotton wool and balloons and _more_ fairy lights. It was nice, and they stopped to have their photo taken before spotting Scott and Allison.

Allison was wearing a pretty silver number and appeared to have snowflakes in her hair, whereas Scott wore a dark suit and a silver bowtie that matched Allison’s dress beautifully. Lydia was show-stopping in a sleek royal blue dress and had managed to drag Aiden out onto the dancefloor. Stiles hung around with Scott while Derek left to grab them drinks.

“He got you a flower?” Allison beamed, pointing at his buttonhole. “That’s so sweet.”

Scott snorted. “Derek? Sweet? Really?”

“I’m sure Derek can be very sweet,” Allison frowned at him. “He’s just not very open about it.”

“He’s a very private person,” Stiles supplied watching his boyfriend’s dark head as it bobbed above most of the crowd. “Reserved, y’know?” Derek heard them talking about him and his head swivelled to stare at Stiles accusingly from twenty feet away. “He’s actually a totally different person when we’re alone, you wouldn’t believe the things he–”

Derek appeared quite suddenly with a forced smile on his face. “C’mon, Stiles.” He took Stiles’s arm in a death grip and dragged him off towards the drinks, leaving Scott and Allison to giggle at each other.

“Do you _mind?_ ” Derek hissed, with no real malice, over non-alcoholic fruit punch.

“Do I mind what?” Stiles blinked at him innocently. “Just telling them what a good boyfriend you are.”

Derek’s eyes narrowed and he was about two seconds away from putting his hands on his hips, Stiles could tell. “If you tell them anything embarrassing–”

“Like what?” Stiles laughed good-naturedly, “You cry during sex? We both know that’s not true.”

Derek’s eyes just narrowed even more, into little slits, and he raised a pointing finger. “You have a _dirty_ mouth when you get horny. There’s plenty of embarrassing things for me to choose from. And the _noises._ Just saying.”

“You like the noises,” Stiles reminded him. “You like the dirty mouth, too.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t expose you.” Derek tilted his head back and raised his eyebrows. “Fight fire with fire. If I’m going down I’m taking you with me.” He turned his back and poured up two glasses of punch.

“Well, now, _that_ sounds like an offer I can’t refuse.” Stiles quipped, smirking at Derek’s mildly irritated glare.

Neither of them could stay angry with the other for very long. It was mostly a blessing, and it just smoothed things out for them. No unnecessary drama, no bullshit. Just the two of them and the fact that they loved each other.

They’d make it work. Stiles knew it, knew it deep down like he’d known he wasn’t an alpha. They were both stubborn as hell sometimes, and they were two vastly different people, but they cared about each other and that was all that mattered. The Delta boss could suck his ass, nobody would take precedence over Derek right now. Stiles looked up at Derek’s scowl and he knew, he knew without scent or sight or consulting his wolf, there was nobody else who would ever matter this much.

And even through Derek’s furrowed eyebrows and frustrated expression, he knew Derek felt the same. And Derek knew what he was thinking about.

The alpha’s expression softened. He set down the glasses and raised a hand to cup Stiles’s cheek. “This is you, Stiles. It is.”

Stiles tilted his head to the side, in question but also towards the warm hand. “What is?”

Derek gave him a small smile. “This is what defines you, Stiles. The unexpected.”

Stiles grinned back. “Gotta keep you on your toes.”

Derek rolled his eyes lightly and handed Stiles his cup of punch. “Consider me kept.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sudden ending? Honestly, I felt it was right. Stiles is moving on with his life, he's not letting the Delta matter.  
> I hope you liked it!


	32. There Has To Be An Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and there we go. Thanks for sticking with me, folks!

It had been a long day at work, but Derek felt better like he always did when he got home to his omega.

Stiles worked on a fluid schedule, running a successful criminal psychology consultancy firm out of his spare room, which Derek’s department had worked with on several occasions. Since John had retired Parrish had taken over as Sheriff and was a pretty cool boss, as far as Derek was concerned. He was really cracking down on gender-based violence and was starting up California’s first Omega Protection Unit. Apparently he had big plans for Derek to help out on that one.

Stiles stood over the kitchen stove stirring pasta – he and Derek took turns to cook, depending on who was home, and the other person washed up – and grinned when his mate entered the room. They’d gotten officially mated a few years ago, had claimed each other two years before that.

Normally, the omega wore the claiming bite, but hardly anything about them was conventional, so Derek had his own, sitting proud and unobscured on his neck. Most people who saw it thought it was some kind of horrible injury, but he didn’t really care what people said. That, he and Stiles had discovered, was the secret to getting by in their society. They needed each other, and their friends, and family, but other than that? People would always gossip, would always have shitty opinions. Who cared?

Things had changed since high school, but, well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Scott and Allison had broken up a few months after high school – they both wanted different things, and it had taken a while, but there was no more animosity between them. They were adults now, with families of their own.

Scott had met a girl named Kira at college, and they had been a thing for seven or so years. Kira was fun and klutzy and a lot like Stiles in many respects, but she was good for Scott. She kept him grounded, whereas with Allison, his head had been in the skies. He was working as a vet at a clinic in Beacon City, and Kira had just finished her master’s degree in biology. They had gotten married in Mexico, a fun affair followed by piña colada on the beach.

Allison had ended up getting together with Isaac, in a move that nobody really understood, but they complemented each other well. They had two twin boys and a younger daughter. The twins were identical, with Isaac’s lazy curls but Allison’s chestnut colouring, and her eyes as well. The girl had been named for Isaac’s mother and had long blonde hair and Chris’s jaw. Isaac had gotten into art professionally and Allison had taken over her father’s gun company and the family tradition of dealing with asshole alphas.

In fact, it had mostly been her who had taken down the head of the Delta back in junior year. Just after the group Lambda trial she had discovered, through a lot of sneaking around and listening in to phone calls, that her grandfather Gerard and aunt Kate were actually responsible for the Delta. It had been a long and heartbreaking process, but Allison wasn’t one to tolerate betrayal like that, and her and Chris had dealt with the problem clinically. Gerard had died in prison, Kate was doing a life sentence with no parole, and the rest of the Lambda had gotten heavy punishments as well.

Ethan and Aiden had cut all ties with Deucalion and given evidence against him. Ethan and Danny had gone separate ways after high school but Lydia and Aiden were still together. He played football and she was doing her Ph.D. in Theoretical Mathematics at MIT – “so much more hands-on than Harvard” – as per Stiles’s predictions. She had refused the whole kids thing until she was done with her degree, and Aiden was still one of the few who could actually keep up with her.

The end of his senior year had come fast, and Derek hadn’t been feeling particularly prepared for leaving Stiles, but they managed to work it out. He did his first year of cop academy in Beacon City, and when Stiles graduated the two of them moved to New York together. Two years into police training, Derek and Isaac went together to the maximum-security prison to visit their incarcerated relatives.

Getting Isaac in at all hadn’t been easy, but it was good for them both. It was closure, in a way. Peter and Lahey wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon, and while Peter tried his best to put Derek on edge with his creepy smiles and ambiguous half-truths, Derek just ploughed on as if he was somebody’s normal uncle, telling him about Laura and cop school, but not Stiles. He was too protective an alpha to tell Peter about Stiles. Other than that he moved on with his life, left his uncle behind. It was straightforward enough, really. He was happy and fulfilled and he didn’t need Peter.

Laura had been promoted to senior doctor and was taking it a lot easier now she was at home on maternity leave. She’d started seeing Jackson after he’d graduated and was doing a gap year volunteering at the hospital and she was actually very good for him. Her sweet disposition brought out his softer side and he knew how to make her laugh. They were expecting a daughter any day now and Derek was looking forward to greeting his niece.

Derek and Stiles themselves were in the middle of the lengthy process of surrogacy. They had decided they wanted kids but had waited for a good time, not wanting to saddle themselves with something they weren’t ready for. They were still debating whether it should be two children or three, but had agreed that the kids should share a mother. The child was five months from being born and was biologically Derek’s kid, and Stiles told him at least twice a day how he was looking forward to seeing their little terror and had a long list of baby names hung up on the fridge.

Derek had suggested naming it after Stiles’s father if it were a boy. Stiles had vetoed that and any other difficult-to-pronounce foreign-sounding name, citing his own traumatic experiences. If it were a girl they were thinking of naming her Talia, but “only if Laura doesn’t beat us to the damn punch”.

John had come around, as they’d known he would. He still wasn’t quite as up with the times when it came to liberal attitudes as Stiles would have liked, but he tried his best and he accepted criticism when it was due.

All in all, life was good. Their struggles were domestic and minimal. Being an omega still wasn’t easy, but since he’d been claimed Stiles had been trying to slowly wean himself off the suppressants. His scent was different, now, he didn’t smell ‘available’ to every alpha in the vicinity, and this way his dad didn’t have to pretend to tut disapprovingly every time his illegal drugs were mentioned in conversation.

The world was a crap place for omegas sometimes. But it was a good place for Stiles.

Derek wrapped his arms around his mate’s waist in the kitchen from behind and smiled into his neck. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”


End file.
